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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/imperialpurple01salt 






IMPERIAL PURPLE 



By Mr. Saltus 



The Anatomy of Negation. 

The Philosophy of Disenchantment. 

Love and Lore. 



Mary Magdalen. 



The Pace that Kills. 

A Transaction in Hearts. 

The Truth about Trlstrem Varick. 

Mr. Incoul's Misadventure. 

A Transient Guest. 

Eden. 



IN PREPARATION — 

Immortal Greece. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE 



BY 

EDGAR SALTUS 



CHICAGO: 

NJorrillHiggins ^ Go. 



1892. 



r 



T\^^^^ 



Ci^'^ 



Copyright, 1S92, 
By EDGAR SALTUS 



A 

M. EDWIN ALBERT SCHROEDER 

Socr?te avait I'aimable habitude de ne refuser 

jamais les dons de ses amis, quel que fut leur peu de 

valeur. Toi, qui resembles tant au vieux sage, tu ne 

refuseras pas, je I'espere, la petite flanerie a travers 

les ages et les dieux que ma paresse offre maintenant 

a ton amitie. 

Edgar Evertson-Saltus 



Paris: 

/ novembre, iSqi. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

That Woman. ' 

II. 

Conjectural Rome. 

III. 
Fabulous Fields. 

IV 

The Pursuit of the Impossible. 

V. 

Nero, 

VI. 

The House of Flavia. 

VII. 

The Poison in the Purple. 

VIII. 
Faustine. 

IX. 
The Agony, 



I. 

THAT WOMAN 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 



I. 



THAT WOMAN. 



When the murder was done and the 
heralds shouted through the thick 
streets that Caesar had passed into 
oblivion, it was the passing of the 
republic they announced, the founda- 
tion of Imperial Rome. 

There was a hush, then a riot which 
frightened a senate that frightened 
the world. For Csesar was adored. 
A man who could give millions away 
and sup on dry bread was apt to con- 
quer, not provinces alone, but hearts. 
Besides, he had begun well and his 
people had done their best. The 



11 



12 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

House of Julia, to which he belonged, 
descended, he declared, from Venus. 
The ancestry was less legendary than 
typical. Cinna drafted a law giving 
him the right to marry as often as he 
chose. His mistresses were queens. 
After the episodes in Gaul, when he 
entered Rome his legions warned the 
citizens to have an eye on their wives. 
At seventeen he fascinated pirates. 
A shipload of the latter had caught 

him and demanded twenty talents 
ransom. " Too little," said the lad; 
''I will give you fifty, and empale you 
too," which he did, jesting with them 
meanwhile, reciting verses of his own 
composition, calling them barbarians 
when they did not applaud, ordering 
them to be quiet when he wished to 
sleep, captivating them by the effront- 
ery of his assurance, and, the ransom 
paid, slaughtering them as he had 
promised. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 13 

Tall, slender, not handsome, but 
superb and therewith so perfectly 
sent out, so well groomed, that Cicero 
mistook him for a fop from whom the 
republic had nothing to fear; splen- 
didly lavish, exquisitely gracious, he 
was born to charm and his charm 
was such that it still subsists. Cato 
alone was unenthralled. But Cato 
was never pleased; he laughed but 
once, and all Rome turned out to see 
him; he belonged to an earlier day, 
to an austerer, perhaps to a better 
one, and it may be that in " that 
woman," as he called Csesar, his 
clearer vision discerned beneath the 
plumage of the peacock, the beak and 
talons of the bird of prey. For they 
were there, and needed only a vote of 
the senate to batten on nations of 
which the senate had never heard. 
Loan him an army, and "that woman" 
was to give geography such a twist 



14 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

that to-day whoso says Caesar says 
history. 

Was it this that Cato saw, or may 
it be that one of the oracles which had 
not ceased to speak had told him of 
that coming night when he was to 
take his own life, fearful lest ''that 
woman'' should overwhelm him with 
the magnificence of his forgiveness? 
Cato walks through history, as he 
walked through the Forum, bare of 
foot — too severe to be simple, too ob- 
stinate to be generous — the image of 
Ancient Rome. 

In Csesar there was nothing of this. 
He was wholly modern; dissolute 
enough for any epoch, but possessed 
of virtues that his contemporaries 
could not spelL A slave tried to poison 
him. Suetonius says he merely put 
the slave to death. The "merely" is 
to the point. Cato would have tortured 
him first. After Pharsalus he forgave 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 15 

everyone. When severe, it was to him- 
self. It is true he turned over two mil- 
lion people into so many dead flies, their 
legs in the air, creating, as Tacitus 
has it, a solitude which he described 
as Peace; but what antitheses may 
not be expected in a man who, before 
the first century was begun, divined 
the fifth, and who in the Suevians — 
that terrible people beside whom no 
nation' could live — foresaw Attila! 

Save in battle his health was poor. 
He was epileptic, his strength under- 
mined by incessant debauches; yet let 
a nation fancying him months away 
put on. insurgent airs, and on that na- 
tion he descended as the thunder does. 
In his campaigns time and again he 
overtook his own messengers. A 
phantom in a ballad was not swifter 
than he. Simultaneously his sword 
flashed in Germany, on the banks of 
the Adriatic, in that Ultima Thule 



16 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

where the Britons Hved. From the 
depths of Gaul he dominated Rome, 
and therewith he was penetrating 
impenetrable forests, trailing legions 
as a torch trails smoke, erecting walls 
that a nation could not cross, turning 
soldiers into marines, infantry into 
cavalr}^, building roads that are roads 
to-day, fighting with one hand and 
writing an epic with the other, dictat- 
ing love-letters, chronicles, dramas; 
finding time to make a collection of 
witticisms; overturning thrones while 
he decorated Greece; mingling initiate 
into orgies of the Druids, and, as 
the cymbals clashed, coquetting with 
those terrible virgins who awoke the 
tempest; not only conquering, but 
captivating, transforming barbarians 
into soldiers and those soldiers into 
senators, submitting three hundred 
nations and ransacking Britannia for 
pearls for his mistresses' ears. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 17 

Each epoch has its secret, and each 
epoch-maker his own. Caesar's secret 
lay in the power he had of projecting 
a soul into the ranks of an army, of 
making legions and their leader one. 
Disobedience only he punished; any- 
thing else he forgave. After a victory 
his soldiery did what they liked. He 
gave them arms, slaves to burnish 
them, women, feasts, sleep. They 
were his comrades; he called them so; 
he wept at the death of any of them, 
and when they were frightened, as 
they were in Gaul before they met 
the Germans, and in Africa before 
they encountered Juba, Caesar fright^ 
ened them still more. He permitted 
no questions, no making of wills. 
The cowards could hide where they 
liked; his old guard, the Tenth, would 
do the work alone; or, threat still 
more sinister, he would command a 
retreat. Ah, that, never! Fanaticism 

2 



18 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

returned, the legions begged to be 
punished. 

Michelet says he would like to have 
seen him crossing Gaul, bare-headed 
in the rain. It would have been as 
interesting, perhaps, to have watched 
him beneath the shade of the velar- 
ium pleading the cause of Masintha 
against the Numidian king. Before 
him was a crowd that covered not 
the Forum alone, but the steps of the 
adjacent temples, the roofs of the 
basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that 
extended remotely to the black walls 
of the Curia Hostilia beyond. And 
there, on the rostrum, a musician be- 
hind him supplying the la from a flute, 
the air filled with gold motes, Csesar, 
his toga becomingly adjusted, a jew- 
elled hand extended, opened for the 
defense. Presently, when through 
the exercise of that art of his which 
Cicero pronounced incomparable, he 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 19 

felt that the sympathy of the audience 
was won, it would have been interest- 
ing, indeed, to have heard him argue 
point after point — clearly, brilliantly, 
wittily ; insulting the plaintiff in poetic 
terms; consigning him gracefully to 
the infernal regions; accentuating a 
fictitious and harmonious anger; dry- 
ing his forehead without disarranging 
his hair; suffocating with the emo- 
tions he evoked; displaying real tears, 
and with them *a knowledge, not only 
of law, rhetoric, philosophy, but of 
geometry, astronomy, ethics and the 
fine arts; blinding his hearers with the 
coruscations of his erudition; stirring 
them with his tongue, as with the point 
of a sword, until, as though abruptly 
possessed by an access of fury, he 
seized the plaintiff by the beard and 
sent him spinning like a leaf which 
the wind has caught. 

It would have bored no one either 



20 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

to have assisted at his triumph when 
he returned from Gaul, when he re- 
turned after Spain, after Pharsalus, 
when he returned from Cleopatra's 
arms. 

On that day the Via Sacra was cur- 
tained with silk. To the blare of 
twisted bugles there descended to it 
from the turning at the hill a troop of 
musicians garmented in leather tunics, 
bonneted with lions' heads. Behind 
them a hundred bulls,* too fat to be 
troublesome, and decked for death, 
bellowed musingly at the sacrifants, 
who, naked to the waist, a long-han- 
dled hammer on the shoulder, main- 
tained them with colored cords. To 
the rumble of wide wheels and the 
thunder of spectators the prodigious 
booty passed, and with it triumphs of 
war, vistas of conquered countries, 
pictures of battles, lists of the van- 
quished, symbols of cities that no 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 21 

longer were; a stretch of ivory on 
which shone three words, each begin- 
ning with a V; images of gods dis- 
turbed, the Rhine, the Rhone, the 
captive Ocean in massive gold; the 
ghtter of three thousand crowns 
offered to the dictator by the army 
and alHes of Rome. Then came the 
standards of the repubhc, a swarm 
of eagles, the size of pigeons, in pol- 
ished silver upheld by lances which 
ensigns bore, preceding the six 
hundred senators who marched in a 
body, their togas bordered with red, 
while to the din of incessant insults, 
interminable files of prisoners passed, 
their wrists chained to iron collars, 
which held their heads very straight, 
and to the rear a litter, in which 
crouched the Vincegetorix of Gaul, a 
great moody giant, his menacing eyes 
nearly hidden in the tangles of his 
tawny hair. 



22 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

When they had gone the street was 
alive with explosions of brass, aflame 
with the burning red cloaks of laureled 
lictors making way for the coming 
of Csesar. Four horses, harnessed 
abreast, their manes dyed, their fore- 
locks puffed, drew a high and wonder- 
fully jeweled car; and there, in the 
attributes and attitude of Jupiter 
Capitolinus, Csesar sat, blinking his 
tired eyes. His face and arms were 
painted vermilion; above the Tyrian 
purple of his toga, above the gold 
work and palms of his tunic, there 
oscillated a little ball in which there 
were charms against Envy. On his 
head a wreath concealed his increas- 
ing baldness; along his left arm the 
sceptre lay ; behind him a boy admon- 
ished him noisily to remember he was 
man, while to the rear for miles and 
miles there rang the laugh of trumpets, 
the click of castanets, the shouts of 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 23 

dancers, the roar of the multitude, the 
tramp of legions, and the cry, caught 
up and repeated, '*/(?/ Trzomphe f'' 

Presentl}^, in the temple of the god 
of gods, side by side with the statue of 
Jupiter, Caesar found his own statue 
with " Caesar, demi-god," at its base. 
The captive chiefs disappeared in 
the Tullianum, and a herald called, 
^'They have Hved!" Through the 
squares jesters circulated, polyglot 
and obscene; in the circus the flower 
of the nobility held the reins ; across 
the Tiber, in an artificial lake, the 
flotilla of Egypt fought against that 
of Tyr; in the amphitheatre there 
was a combat of soldiers, infantry 
against cavalry, one that indemnified 
those that had not seen the massacres 
in Thessaly and in Spain. There were 
public feasts, gifts to every one. 
Tables were set in the Forum, in the 
circuses and theatres, Falernian cir- 



24 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

culated in amphorae, Chius in barrels, 
When the populace was gorged there 
were the red feathers to enable it to 
gorge again. Intoxication knew no 
frontiers. In the arenas the gladia- 
tors died consoled. Of the Rome of 
Romulus there was nothing left save 
the gaunt she-wolf, her wide lips curled 
at the descendants of her nursling. 

Later, when in slippered feet Csesar 
wandered through those lovely gar- 
dens of his that lay beyond the Tiber, 
it may be that he recalled a dream 
which had com.e to him as a lad; one 
which concerned the submission of 
his mother; one which had disturbed 
him until the soothsayers said: "The 
mother you saw is the earth, and you 
will be her master." And as the 
memory of the dream returned, per- 
haps with it came the memory of the 
hour when as simple quaestor he had 
wept at Gaddir before a statue that 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 25 

was there. Demi-god, yes; he was 
that. More, even ; he was dictator, but 
the dream was unfulfilled. There were 
the depths of Hither Asia, the mys- 
teries that lay beyond; there were the 
glimmering plains of the Caucasus; 
there were the Vistula and the Baltic; 
the diadems of Cyrus and of Alexan- 
der defying his ambition yet, and 
what were triumphs and divinity to 
one who would own the world! 

It was this that preoccupied him. 
The immensity of his successes seemed 
petty and Rome very small. Hereto- 
fore he had forgiven those who had 
opposed him. Presently his attitude 
changed, and so subtly that it was the 
more humiliating; it was not that he 
no longer forgave, he disdained to 
punish. His contempt was absolute. 
The senate made his office of ponti- 
fix maximus hereditary and accorded 
the title of Imperator to his heirs. He 



26 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

snubbed the senate and the honors 
that it brought. The senate was 
shocked. Composed of men whose 
fortunes he had made, the senate was 
not only shocked, its education in in- 
gratitude was complete. Already 
there had been murmurs. Not con- 
tent with disarranging the calendar, 
outlining an empire, drafting a code 
while planning fresh beauties, new the- 
atres, bi-lingual libraries, larger tem- 
ples, grander gods, Caesar was at work 
in the markets, in the kitchens of the 
gourmets, in the jewel-boxes of the 
virgins. Liberty, visibly, was taking 
flight. Besides, the power concen- 
trated in him might be so pleasantly 
distributed. It was decided that 
Caesar was in the way. To put him 
out of it a pretext was necessary. 

One day the senate assembled at 
his command. They were to sign a 
decree creating him king. In order 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 27 

not to, Suetonius says, they killed him, 
wounding each other in the effort, for 
Caesar fought like the demon that he 
was, desisting only when he recog- 
nized Brutus, to whom, in Greek, he 
muttered a reproach, and, draping his 
toga that he might fall with decency, 
fell backward, his head covered, a 
few feet from the bronze wolf that 
stood, its ears pointed at the letters 
S. P. Q. R. which decorated a frieze 
of the Curia. 

Brutus turned to harangue the sen- 
ate; it had fled. He went to the 
Forum to address the people ; there was 
no one. Rome was strangely empty. 
Doors were barricaded, windows 
closed. Through the silent streets 
gladiators prowled. Night came, 
and with it whispering groups. The 
groups thickened, voices mounted. 
Caesar's will had been read. He had 
left his gardens to the people, a gift 



28 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

to every citizen, his wealth and power 
to his butchers. The body, which two 
slaves had removed, an arm hanging 
from the litter, had never been as 
powerfully alive. Caesar reigned then 
as never before. An actor mouthed: 

"I brought them Hfe, they gave me death." 

And willingly would the mob have 
made Rome the funeral pyre of their 
idol. In the sky a comet appeared. 
It was his soul on its way to Olym- 
pus. 



II. 

CONJECTURAL ROME 



29 



II. 



CONJECTURAL ROME. 

"I received Rome in brick; I shall 
leave it in marble," said Augustus, 
vrho was fond of fine phrases, a trick 
he had caught from Vergil. And 
when he looked from his home on the 
Palatine over the glitter of the Forum 
and the glare of the Capitol to the 
new and wonderful precinct which 
extended to the Field of Mars, there 
was a stretch of splendor which sanc- 
tioned the boast. The city then was 
very vast. The tourist might walk in 
it, as in the London of to-day,mile after 
mile, and at whatever point he placed 
himself, Rome still lay beyond; a 
Rome quite like London — one that 
was choked with mystery, with gold 
and curious crime. 

31 



Yi 



32 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

But it was not all marble. There 
were green terraces and porphyry 
porticoes that leaned to a river 
on which red galleys passed; there 
were theatres in which a multitude 
could jeer at an emperor, and arenas 
in which an emperor could watch 
a multitude die; there were bronze 
doors and garden roofs, glancing villas 
and temples that defied the sun; there 
were spacious streets, a Forum cur» 
tained with silk, the glint and evoca- 
tions of trophies of war, the splendor 
of a host of gods, but it was not all 
marble; there were rents in the mag- 
nificence and tatters in the laticlave 
of state. 

In the Subura, where at night 
women sat in high chairs, ogling the 
passer with painted eyes, there was 
still plenty of brick; tall tenements, 
soiled linen, the odor of Whitechapel 
and St. Giles. The streets were noisy 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 33 

with match-peddlers, with vendors of 
cake and tripe and coke; there were 
touts there too, altars to unimportant 
divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old 
clothes, in obscene pictures and un- 
mentionable wares; at the crossings 
there were thimbleriggers, clowns and 
jugglers, who made glass balls appear 
and disappear surprisingly; there were 
doorways decorated with curious in- 
vitations, gossippy barbershops, where 
through the liberality of politicians, 
the scum of a great city was shaved, 
curled and painted free; and there 
were public houses, where vagabond 
slaves and sexless priests drank the 
mulled wine of Crete, supped on the 
flesh of beasts slaughtered in the 
arena, or watched the Syrian women 
twist to the click of castanets. 

Beyond were grey quadrangular 
buildings, the stomach of Rome, 
through which, each noon, ediles 



34 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

passed, verifying the prices, the 
weights and measures of the market 
men, examining the fish and meats, 
the enormous cauHflowers that came 
from the suburbs, Veronese carrots, 
Arician pears, stout thrushes, suckHng 
pigs, eggs embedded in grass, oysters 
from Baise, boxes of onions and garHc 
mixed, mountains of poppies, beans 
and fennel, destroying whatever had 
ceased to be fresh and taxing that 
which was. 

On the Via Sacra were the fine 
shops frequented by ladies; bazaars 
where silks and xylons were to be 
had, essences and unguents, travel- 
ing boxes of scented wood, switches 
of yellow hair, useful drugs such 
as hemlock, aconite, mandragora 
and cantharides; the last thing 
of Ovid's and the Mdyjowt Xoyov those 
improper little novels that came from 
Greece. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 35 

On the Appian Way, through green 
afternoons and pink arcades, fashion 
strolled. There wealth passed in its 
chariots, smart young men that smelt 
of cinnamon instead of war, nobles, 
matrons and cocottes. 

At the other end of the city, be- 
yond the menagerie of the Pantheon, 
was the Field of Mars, an open-air 
o-ymnasium, where every form of ex- 
ercise was to be had, even to that sim- 
ple promenade in which the Romans 
delighted, and which in Caesar's camp 
so astonished the Verronians that they 
thought the promenaders crazy and 
offered to lead them to their tents. 
There was tennis for those who liked 
it; racquets, polo, football, quoits, 
wrestling, everything apt to induce 
perspiration and prepare for the hour 
when a gong of bronze announced the 
opening of the baths — those wonder- 
ful baths, where the Roman, his slaves 



36 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

about him, after passing through 
steam and water and the hands of the 
masseur, had every hair plucked from 
his arms, legs and armpits; his flesh 
rubbed down with nard, his limbs 
polished with pumice; and then, 
wrapped in a scarlet robe, lined with 
fur, was sent home in a litter. "Strike 
them in the face!" cried Caisar at 
Pharsalus, when the young patricians 
made their charge; and the young 
patricians, who cared more for their 
looks than they did for victory, turned 
and fled. 

It was to the Field of Mars that 
Agrippa came, to whom Rome owed 
the Pantheon and the demand for a 
law which should inhibit the private 
ownership of a masterpiece. There, 
too, his eunuchs about him, Mecaenas 
lounged, companioned by Varus, by 
Horace and the mime Bathylle, all 
of whom he was accustomed to invite 



IMPERIA L P UBPLE. 37 

to that lovely villa of his which over- 
looked the blue Sabinian hills, and 
where suppers were given such as 
those which Petronius has described 
so alertly and so well. 

In a hall like that of Mecaenas', one 
divided against itself, the upper half 
containing the couches and .tables, the 
other reserved for the service and the 
entertainments that follow, the ceiling 
was met by columns, the walls hid- 
den by panels of gems. On a frieze 
twelve pictures, surmounted by the 
signs of the zodiac, represented the 
dishes of the different months. Be- 
neath the bronze beds and silver 
tables mosaics were set in imitation 
of food that had fallen and had not 
been swept away. And there, in 
white ungirdled tunics, the head and 
neck circled with coils of amaranth — 
the perfume of which in opening the 
pores neutralizes the fumes of wine — 



38 IMPERIAD PURPLE. 

the guests lay, fanned by boys, whose 
curly hair they used for napkins. 
Under the supervision of a butler the 
courses were served on platters so 
large that they covered the tables; 
sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; 
dormice baked in poppies and honey; 
peacock-tongues flavored with cin- 
namon; oysters stewed in garum — a 
sauce made of the intestines of fish — 
sea-wolves from the Baltic; sturgeons 
from Rhodes; fig-peckers from Samos; 
African snails; pale beans in pink 
lard; and a yellow pig cooked after 
the Trojan fashion, from which, when 
carved, hot sausages fell and live 
thrushes flew. Therewith was the 
mulsum, a cup made of white wine, 
nard, roses, absinthe and honey; the 
delicate sweet wines of Greece; and 
crusty Falernian of the year six hun- 
dred and thirty-two. As the cups 
circulated, choirs entered, chanting 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 39 

sedately the last erotic song; lithe 
virgins, their bodies rubbed with oil, 
wrestled like athletes in the games; a 
clown danced on the top of a ladder, 
which he maintained upright as he 
danced, telling meanwhile untellable 
stories to the frieze; and host and 
guests, unvociferously, as good breed- 
ing dictates, chatted through the 
pauses of the service; discussed the 
disadvantages of death, the value of 
Ncevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, 
banished because of Livia's eyes. 

Such was the Rome of Augustus. 
"Caesar," cried a mime to him one 
day, "do you know that it is import- 
ant for you that the people should be 
interested in Bathylle and in myself.^'' 

The mime was right. The sover- 
eign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor 
yet the aristocracy. The latter was 
dead. It had been banished by bar- 
barian senators, by barbarian gods; 



40 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

it had died twice, at Pharsalus, at 
Philippi; it was the people that was 
sovereign, and it was important that 
that sovereign should be amused — 
flattered, too, and fed. For thirty 
years not a Roman of note had died 
in his bed; not one but had kept by 
him a slave who should kill him when 
his hour had come; anarchy had been 
continuous; but now Rome was at 
rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. 
Made up of every nation and every 
vice, the universe was ransacked for 
its entertainment. The mountains 
sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there 
were boas from the jungles, bulls from 
the plains, and hippopotami from the 
waters of the Nile. Into the arenas 
patricians descended; in the amphi- 
theatre there were criminals from 
Gaul; in the Forum philosophers from 
Greece. On the stage there were 
tragedies, pantomimes and farce; 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 41 

there were races in the circus, and 
in the sacred groves girls with the 
Orient in their eyes and sHm waists 
that swayed to the crotals. For the 
thirst of the sovereign there were 
aqueducts, and for its hunger Africa, 
Egypt, Sicily contributed grain. 
Syria unveiled her altars, Persia the 
mystery and magnificence of her 
gods. 

Such was Rome. Augustus was 
less noteworthy; so unnecessary even 
that every student must regret Ac- 
tium, Anthony's defeat, the passing 
of Caesar's dream. For Anthony was 
made for conquests; it was he who, 
fortune favoring, might have given 
the world to Rome. A splendid, an 
impudent bandit, first and foremost a 
soldier, vaunting himself a descendant 
of Hercules whom he resembled; 
hailed at Ephesus as Bacchus, in 
Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, 



42 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

and Teuton in his capacity for drink; 
vomiting in the open Forum, and 
making and unmaking kings; weav- 
ing with that viper of the Nile a 
romance which is history; passing in- 
itiate into the inimitable life, it would 
have been curious to have watched 
him that last night when the silence 
was stirred by the hum of harps, the 
cries of bacchantes bearing his tute- 
lary god back to the Roman camp, 
while he bade farewell to love, to 
empire and to life. 

Augustus resembled him not at all. 
He was a colorless monarch; an 
emperor in ever3^thing but dignity, a 
prince in everything but grace; a tac- 
tician, not a soldier; a superstitious 
braggart, afraid of nothing but danger ; 
seducing women to learn their hus- 
bands' secrets; exiling his daughter, 
not because she had lovers, but be- 
cause she had other lovers than him- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 43 

self; exiling Ovid because of Livia, 
who in the end poisoned her prince, 
and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering 
of speech, and coarse of manner — a 
hypocrite and a comedian in one — so 
guileful and 3^et so stupid that while 
a credulous moribund ordered the 
gods to be thanked that Augustus 
survived him, the people publicly 
applied to him an epithet which des- 
ignates an unnameable beast. 

Such was the individual whom 
school-girls are instructed to admire, 
though for what reason it is difficult 
to fancy, unless it be that he is 
regarded as a patron of letters of 
which he knew nothing, the host of 
pedantic bores. After Philippi and 
the suicide of Brutus; after Actium 
and Anthony's death, admittedly, for 
the first time in ages, the gates of the 
Temple of Janus were closed. There 
was peace in the world; but it was 



44 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

the sword of Caesar, not of Augustus, 
that brought the insurgents to book. 
At each of the victories he was either 
asleep or ill. At the time of battle 
there was always some god warning 
him to be careful. The battle won, 
he was brave, pitiless and ready of 
jest. A father and son begged for 
mercy. He promised forgiveness to 
the son on condition that he killed 
his father. The son accepted and did 
the work; then he had the son des- 
patched. A prisoner begged but for 
a grave. ^'The vultures v/ill see to 
it," he answered. When at the head 
of Csesar^s legions, he entered Rome 
to avenge the latter's death, he an- 
nounced beforehand that he would 
imitate neither Caesar's moderation 
nor Sylla's cruelty. There would be 
only a few proscriptions, and a price 
— and what a price, liberty! — was 
placed on the heads of hundreds of 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 45 

senators and thousands of kniorhts. 
And these notables, who had more 
slaves than they knew by sight, slaves 
whom they tossed alive to fatten fish, 
slaves to whom they affected never 
to speak, and who were crucified did 
they so much as sneeze in their 
presence— at the feet of these slaves 
the aristocrats rolled, imploring them 
not to deliver them up. Now and 
then a slave was merciful; Augustus 
never. 

Successes such as these made him 
ambitious. Having vanquished with 
the sword, he tried the pen. ^'You 
may grant the freedom of the city to 
your barbarians," said a wit to him 
one day, "but not to your solecisms." 
Undeterred he began a tragedy 
entitled Ajax, and discovering his 
incompetence, gave it up. ''And 
what has become of Ajax?" a para- 
site asked, "Ajax threw himself on 



46 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

a sponge," replied Augustus, whose 
father, it is to be regretted, did not do 
Hkewise. Nevertheless, it were pleas- 
ant to have assisted at his funeral. 

A couch of ivory and gold, ten 
feet high, draped with purple, stood 
for a week in the atrium of the pal- 
ace. Within the couch, hidden from 
view, the body of the emperor lay, 
ravaged by poison. Above was a 
statue, recumbent, in wax, made after 
his image and dressed in imperial 
robes. Near by a little slave with a 
big fan protected the statue from flies. 
Each day physicians came, gazed at 
the closed wax mouth, and murmured, 
^'He is worse." In the vestibule was a 
pot of burning ilex, and stretching 
out through the portals a branch of 
cypress warned the pontiffs from the 
contamination of the sight of death. 

At high noon on the seventh day 
the funeral crossed the city. First 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 47 

were the flaming torche-s; the statues 
of the House of Octavia; senators in 
blue; knights in scarlet; magistrates; 
lictors; the pick of the praetorian guard. 
Then, to the alternating choruses of 
boys and girls, the rotting body passed 
down the Sacred Way. Behind it 
Tiberius in a travelling-cloak, his 
hands unringed, marched meditating 
on the curiosities of life, while to the 
rear there straggled a troop of danc- 
ing satyrs, led by a mime dressed in 
resemblance of Augustus, whose de- 
fects he caricatured, whose vices he 
parodied and on whom the surging 
crowd closed in. 

On the Field of Mars the pyre had 
been erected, a great square structure 
of resinous wood, the interior filled 
with coke and sawdust, the exterior 
covered with illuminated cloths, on 
which, for base, a tower rose, three 
stories high. Into the first story flow- 



48 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

ers and perfumes were thrown, into 
the second the couch was raised, then 
a torch was appHed. 

As the smoke ascended an eagle 
shot from the summit, circled a mo- 
ment, and disappeared. For the sum 
of a milHon sesterces a senator swore 
that with the eagle he had seen the 
emperor's soul. 



III. 

FABULOUS FIELDS. 



49 



III. 



FABULOUS FIELDS. 

Mention Tiberius, and the name 
evokes a sceptered butcher, ill with 
satyrisis; a taciturn tyrant, hideous 
and debauched; an unclean old man 
devising in the crypts of a palace infa- 
mies so monstrous that to describe 
them new words weie coined. 

In the Borghese collection Tiberius 
is rather good-looking than otherwise, 
not an Antinous certainly, but mani- 
festly a dreamer; one whose eyes must 
have been almost feline in their ab- 
straction, and in the corners of whose 
mouth 3'ou detect pride, no doubt, but 
melancholy as well. The pride was 
congenital, the melancholy was not. 

Under Tiberius there was quiet, a 
romancer wrote, and the phrase in its 

51 



52 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

significance passed into legend, form- 
ing as it passed one of those miscon- 
ceptions that shroud the unprotected 
dead. During the dozen or more 
years that Tiberius ruled in Rome, 
his wisdom, moderation, modesty and 
impartiality were recognized and at- 
tested. The Tiber overflowed, the 
senate looked for a remedy in the Siby- 
line Books. Tiberius set some en- 
gineers to work. A citizen swore by 
Augustus and swore falsely. The sen- 
ate sought to punish him, not for per- 
jury but for sacrilege. It is for Au- 
gustus to punish, said Tiberius. The 
senate wanted to name a month after 
him. Tiberius declined. "Suppos- 
ing I were the thirteenth Caesar, what 
would you do .^" For years he reigned, 
popular and acclaimed, caring the 
while nothing for popularity and less 
for pomp. Sagacious, witty even, be- 
lieving perhaps in little else than fate 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 53 

and mathematics, yet maintaining the 
institutions of the land, striving reso- 
lutely for the best, outwardly impas- 
sible and inwardly mobile, he was a 
man and his patience had bounds. 
There were conspirators in the atrium, 
there was death in the courtier's 
smile; and finding his favorites false, 
his life threatened, danger at every 
turn, his conception of rulership 
changed. Where moderation had 
been suddenly there gleamed the axe. 
Tacitus, always dramatic, states 
that at the time terror devasted the 
city. It so happened that under the 
republic there was a law against 
whomso diminished the majesty of 
the people. The republic was a god, 
one that had its temple, its priests, its 
altars. When the republic suc- 
cumbed, its divinity passed to the 
emperor; he became Jupiter's peer, 
and, as such, possessed of a majesty 



54 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

which it was sacrilege to sHght. 
Consulted on the subject, Tiberius 
replied that the law must be observed. 
Originally instituted in prevention of 
offenses against the public good, it 
was found to change into a crime, a 
word, a gesture or a look. It was a 
crime to undress before a statue of 
Augustus, to mention his name in the 
latrinse, to carry a coin with his image 
into a lupanar. The punishment was 
death. Of the property of the 
accused, a third went to the informer, 
the rest to the state. Then abruptly 
terror stalked abroad. No one was 
safe except the obscure, and it was the 
obscure that accused. Once an 
accused accused his accuser; the 
latter went mad. There was but one 
refuge — the tomb. If the accused had 
time to kill himself before he was 
tried, his property was safe from 
seizure and his corpse from disgrace. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 55 

Suicide became endemic in Rome. 
Never among the rich were orgies as 
frenetic as then. Tliere was a breath- 
less chase after dehghts, which the 
summons, "It is time to die," might 
at any moment interrupt. 

Tiberius meanwhile had gone from 
Rome. It was then his legend began. 
He was represented living at Capri 
in a collection of twelve villas, each 
of w^iich was dedicated to a particu- 
lar form of lust, and there with the 
paintings of Parrhasius for stimulant 
the satyr lounged. He was then an old 
man; his life had been passed in pub- 
lic, his morals unreproved. If no one 
becomes suddenly base, it is rare for 
a man of seventy to become abruptly 
vile. "Whoso," Sakya Muni an- 
nounced — "whoso discovers that grief 
comes from affection,will retire into the 
jungles and there remain." Tiberius 
had made the discovery. The jungles 



56 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

he selected were the gardens by the 
sea. And in those gardens, gossip 
represented him devising new forms 
of old vice. On the subject every 
doubt is permissible, and even other- 
wise, morality then existed in but one 
form, one which the entire nation 
observed, wholly, absolutely, and with 
all its soul; that form was patriotism. 
Chastity was expected of the vestal, 
but of no one else. The matrons had 
certain traditions to maintain, certain 
appearances to preserve, but other- 
wise everybody was free enough, and 
that everybody made use of that 
freedom, the law Pappea Poppcea 
attests. 

In those days matrimony was not 
as frequent as it has since become. 
When it occurred, divorce was its 
natural consequence. Incompatibility 
was sufficient cause. Cicero, who has 
given it to history that the best 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 57 

women counted the years not numeri- 
cally, but by their different husbands, 
obtained a divorce on the ground that 
his wife did not idolize him. Many 
a man on his return from a journey 
discovered that the lady he had left at 
the head of his house had obtained a 
divorce in his absence. According 
to Plutarch, a gentleman, Hortensius 
by name, became enamored of 
Cato's daughter, Portia, then the wife 
of Bibulus, and begged Cato to hand 
her over to him. Cato refused, alleg- 
ing: that Portia was in love with her 
husband. At this, Hortensius, casting 
about for a seductive argument, sug- 
gested that if Portia would consent 
to be his wife, so soon as she became 
a mother, she might return to Bibulus. 
Cato, however, was firm; he persisted 
in his refusal; yet, that it might not 
create ill feeling, he gave his own wife 
to Hortensius, and when, later, Hor- 



58 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

tensius was gathered to his fathers, 
remarried the widow. 

But that everyone was not as anx- 
ious for matrimony the law Pappea 
Poppoea shows. According to its 
canons matrimony was an obligation 
the citizen owed to the state, procrea- 
tion a duty. Whoso at twenty-five 
was not married, whoso, divorced or 
widowed did not remarry, whoso, 
though married, was without children, 
was regarded as an enemy and de- 
clared incapable of inheriting or of 
serving the state. To this law, one of 
Augustus' stupidities which presently 
fell into disuse, only a technical ob- 
servance was paid. Men married just 
enough to gain a position or inherit a 
legacy; the next day they got a di- 
vorce. At the moment of need a 
child was adopted; the moment passed, 
the child was disowned. But if the 
law had little value, at least it shows 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 59 

that virtue was infrequent, and it is 
precisely for this reason that the 
gossip concerning Tiberius may be 
treated as gossip should; he differed, 
and singularly from other men. 

^^Ho sempreamafo la solitaria vita^'''^ 
Petrarch, referring to himself, de- 
clared and, Tiberius might have said 
the same thing. He was in love with 
solitude; ill with efforts for the un- 
attained; sick with the ingratitude of 
man. Presently it was decided that 
he had lived long enough. He was 
suffocated — beneath a mattress at that. 
Caesar had dreamed of a universal 
monarchy of which he should be 
king; he was murdered. That dream 
was also Anthony's; he killed himself. 
Cato had sought the restoration of 
the republic, and Brutus the attain- 
ment of virtue; both committed 
suicide. Under the empire dreamers 
fared ill. Tiberius was a dreamer. 



60 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

In a palace where a curious concep- 
tion of the love of Atalanta and 
Meleager was said to figure on the 
walls, there was a door on which was 
a legend, imitated from one that over- 
hung the Theban library of Osy- 
mandias — ^y/^? UTpnov^ Pharmacy of 
the Soul. It was there Tiberius 
dreamed. 

On the ivory shelves were the 
philters of Parthenius, labeled De 
Amatoriis A^ectionihus^ the Syharis 
of Clitonymus, the Erotopcegnia of 
Lsevius, the maxims and instructions 
of Elephantis, the nine books of 
Sappho. There also were the pathetic 
adventures of Odatis and Zariadres, 
which Chares of Mitylene had given 
to the world; the astonishing tales of 
that early Cinderella, Rhodopis; and 
with them those romances of Ionian 
nights by Aristides of Milet, which 
Crassus took with him when he set 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 61 

out to subdue the Parthians, and 
which, found in the booty, were read 
aloud to the people that they might 
judge the morals of a nation that pre- 
tended to rule the world. 

Moral, certainly they were not ; but 
like everything else which came from 
Greece, they were the work of a mas- 
ter in art. Concerning Aristides of 
Milet histor}^ is silent, but it may be 
safely conjectured that his life differed 
from that of his heroes. As often as 
not the man who sounds the cymbals 
to the proprieties and plays the flute 
to ethereal affection, conceals beneath 
obsequious cant the stigmata of satis- 
fied vice. It is he who in vichy-water 
phrases pays to virtue the tribute of 
sin. On the other hand a tendency 
toward eroticism is the surest indica- 
tion of chastity. It is continence that 
makes the St. Anthony. In the blood 
of the chaste cantharides abound. 



62 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Whether such medicaments are ser- 
viceable to the soul is a different mat- 
ter. Tiberius had other druo^s on the 
ivory shelves — magic preparations that 
transported him to fabulous fields. 
There was a work by Hecatseus, w4th 
which he could visit Hyperborea, that 
land where happiness was a birthright, 
inalienable at that; yet a happiness so 
sweet that it must have been cloying; 
for the people who enjoyed it, and with 
it the appanage of limitless life, killed 
themselves from sheer ennui. Theo- 
pompus disclosed to him a stranger 
vista — a continent beyond the ocean — 
one where there were immense citieSj 
and where two rivers flowed — the 
River of Pleasure and the River of 
Pain. With lambulus he discovered 
the Fortunate Isles, where there were 
men with elastic bones, bifurcated 
tongues ; men who never married, who 
worshipped the sun, whose life was an 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 63 

uninterrupted delight, and who, when 
overtaken by age, lay on a perfumed 
grass that produced a voluptuous 
death. Evhemerus, a terrible atheist, 
whose Sacred History the early bishops 
wielded against polytheism until 
they discovered it was double-edged, 
took him to Panchaia, an island where 
incense grew; where property was 
held in common; where there was but 
one law — Justice, yet a justice differ- 
ent from our own, one which Husfo 
must have intercepted when he made 
an entrancing yet enigmatical appari- 
tion exclaim: 

"Tu me crois la Justice, je suis la Pitie." 

And in this paradise, where nature 
laughed the seasons through, there 
was a temple, and before it a column, 
about which, in Panchaian characters, 
ran a history of ancient kings, who, to 
the astonishment of the tourist, were 
found to be none other than the gods 



6i IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

whom the universe adored, and who 
in earher days had announced them- 
selves divinities, the better to rule the 
hearts and minds of man. 

With other guides Tiberius jour- 
neyed through lands where dreams 
come true. Aristeas of Proconnesus 
led him among the Arimaspi,a curious 
people who passed their lives fighting 
for gold with griffons in the dark. 
With Isogonus he descended the 
valley of Ismaus, where wild men 
were, whose feet turned inwards. In 
Albania he found a race with pink 
eyes and white hair; in Sarmatia 
another that ate only on alternate 
days. Agatharcides took him to 
Libya, and there introduced him to 
the Psyllians, in whose bodies was a 
poison deadly to serpents, and who, to 
test the fidelity of their wives, placed 
their children in the presence of 
snakes; if the snakes fled they knew 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 65 

their wives were pure. Callias took 
him further yet, to the home of 
the hermaphrodites; Nymphodorus 
showed him a race of fascinators who 
used enchanted words. With Apol- 
lonides he encountered women who 
killed with their eyes those on whom 
they looked too long. Megasthenes 
guided him to the Astomians, whose 
garments were the down of feathers, 
and who lived on the scent of the 
rose. 

In his cups they all passed, confus- 
edly, before him; the hermaphrodites 
whispered to the rose — breathers 
secrets of impossible love; the grif- 
fons bore to him women with magical 
eyes; the Albanians danced with 
elastic feet; he heard the shrill call of 
the Psyllians, luring the serpents to 
death; the column of Panchaia un- 
veiled its mysteries ; the Hyperboreans 
the reason of their fear of life, and on 



66 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

the wings of the chimera he set out 
again in search of that continent 
which haunted antiquity and which 
lay beyond the sea. 



IV. 

THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. 



67 



IV. 

THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. 

''Another Phaethon for the uni- 
verse," Tiberius is reported to have 
muttered, as he gazed at his nephew 
Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who was 
to suffocate him with a mattress and 
rule in his stead. 

To rule is hardly the expression. 
There is no term in English to con- 
vey that dominion over sea and sky 
which a Caesar possessed, and which 
Caligula was the earliest to understand. 
Augustus was the first magistrate of 
Rome, Tiberius the first citizen./ 
Caligula was the first emperor, but an 
emperor hallucinated by the enigma 
of his own grandeur, a prince for 
whose sovereignty the world was too 
small. 

69 



70 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Each epoch has its secret, some- 
times puerile, often perplexing; but in 
its maker there is another and a more 
interesting one yet. Eliminate Cali- 
gula, and Nero, Domitian, Commo- 
dus, Caracalla and Heliogabalus 
would never have been. It was he 
who gave them both raison d'etre 
and incentive. The lives of all of 
them are horrible, yet analyze the hor- 
rible and you find the sublime. 

Fancy a peak piercing the heavens, 
shadowing the earth. It was on a 
peak such as that the young emperors 
of old Rome balanced themselves, a 
precipice on either side. Did they 
look below, a vertigo rose to meet 
them; from above delirium came, 
while the horizon, though it hemmed 
the limits of vision, could not mark the 
frontiers of their dream. In addition 
there was the exaltation that altitudes 
produce. The valleys have their 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 71 

imbeciles; it is from mountains the 
poet and madman come. Caligula was 
both, sceptered at that; and with what 
a sceptre! One that stretched from 
the Rhine to the Euphrates, domi- 
nated a hundred and fifty million peo- 
ple; one that a mattress had given and 
a knife was to take away; a sceptre 
that lashed the earth, threatened the 
sky, beckoned planets and ravished 
the divinity of the divine. 

To wield such a sceptre securely 
requires grace, no doubt, majesty too, 
but certainly strength; the latter 
Caligula possessed, but it was the 
feverish strength of one who had 
fathomed the unfathomable, and who 
sought to make its depths his own. 
Caligula was haunted by the intan 
gible. His sleep was a communion 
with Nature, with whom he believed 
himself one. At times the Ocean 
talked to him; at others the 



72 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Earth had secrets which it wished to 
tell. Again there was some matter of 
moment which he must mention to 
the day, and he would wander out in 
the vast galleries of the palace and 
invoke the Dawn, bidding it come and 
listen to his speech. The day was 
deaf, but there was the moon, and he 
prayed her to descend and share his 
couch. Luna declined to be the 
mistres. of a mortal; to seduce her 
Caligula determined to become a god. 
Nothing was easier. An emperor 
had but to open his veins, and in an 
hour he was a divinity. But the 
divinity which Caligula desired was 
not of that kind. He wished to be a 
god, not on Olympus alone, but on 
earth as well. He wished to be a 
palpable, tangible, living god; one that 
mortals could see, which was more, 
he knew, than could be said of the 
others. The mere wish was sufficient 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 73 

— Rome fell at his feet. The patent 
of divinity was in the genuflections of 
a nation. At once he had a temple, 
priests and flamens. Inexhaustible 
Greece was sacked again. The 
statues of her gods, disembarked at 
Rome, were decapitated, and on them 
the head of Caius shone. 

Heretofore his dress had not been 
Roman, nor, for that matter, the garb 
of a man. On his wrists were brace- 
lets; about his shoulders was a mantle 
made bright with gems; beneath it 
was a tunic, and on his feet were the 
high white slippers that women wore. 
But when the god came the costume 
changed. One day he was Apollo, 
the nimbus on his curls, the Graces at 
his side; the next he was Mercury, 
wings at his heels, the caduceus in 
his hand; again he was Venus. But 
it was as Jupiter Latialis, armed with 
the thunderbolt and decorated with a 



74 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

great gold beard, that he appeared at 
his best. 

The role was very real to him. 
After the fashion of Olympians he 
became frankly incestuous, seducing 
vestals, his sisters too, and gaining 
in boldness with each metamorpho- 
sis, he menaced the Capitoline Jove. 
"Prove your power," he cried to him, 
"or fear my own!'' He thundered at 
him with machine-made thunder, with 
lightning that flashed from a pan. 
"Kill me," he shouted, "or I will kill 
you!" Jove, ummoved, must have 
moved his assailant, for presently 
Caligula lowered his voice, whispered 
in the old god's ear, questioned him, 
meditated on his answer, grew per- 
plexed, violent again, and threatened 
to send him home. 

These interviews humanized him. 
He forgot the moon and mingled with 
men, inviting them to die. The invi- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 75 

tation being invariably accepted, he 
became a connoisseur in death, an ar- 
tist in blood, a ruler to whom cruelty 
was not merely an aid to government 
but an individual pleasure, and there- 
with such a perfect lover, such a 
charming host! 

"Dear heart," he murmured to his 
mistress Pryallis, as she lay one night 
in his arms, "I think I will have you 
tortured that you may tell me why I 
love you so." But of that the girl 
saw no need. She either knew the 
reason or invented one, for presently 
he sighed in her ear: "And to think 
that I have but a sign to make and 
that beautiful head of yours is off!" 
Musings of this description were so 
pleasurable that one evening he ex- 
plained to guests whom he had star- 
tled with his laughter, that it was 
amusing to reflect how easily he could 
have all of them killed. 



76 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

But even to a god life is not an un- 
mixed delight. Caligula had his lit- 
tle troubles. About him there had 
settled a disturbing quiet. Rome was 
hushed, the world was very still. 
There was not so much as an earth- 
quake. The reign of Augustus had 
been marked by the defeat of Varus. 
Under Tiberius a falling amphithea- 
tre had killed a multitude. Caligula 
felt that through sheer felicity his own 
reign might be forgot. A famine, a 
pest, an absolute defeat, a terrific con- 
flagration — any prodigious calamity 
that should sweep millions away and 
stamp his own memory immutably on 
the chronicles of time, how desirable 
it were! But there was nothing. 
The crops had never been more 
abundant; apart from the arenas and 
the prisons, the health of the empire 
was excellent; on the frontiers not so 
much as the rumor of an insurrection 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 77 

could be heard, and Nero was yet to 
come. 

Perplexed, Caligula reflected, and 
presently from Baise to Puzzoli, over 
the waters of the bay, he galloped on 
horseback, the cuirass of Alexander 
glittering on his breast. The inter- 
vening miles had been spanned by a 
bridge of ships and on them a road 
had been built, one of those roads for 
which the Romans were famous, a 
road like the Appian Way, in earth 
and stone, bordered by inns, by pink 
arcades, green retreats, forest reaches, 
the murmur of trickling streams. So 
many ships were anchored there that 
through the unrepleted granaries the 
fear of famine stalked. Caligula, 
meanwhile, his guests behind him, 
made cavalry charges across the sea, 
or in a circus-chariot held the ribbons, 
while four white horses, maddened by 
swaying lights, bore him to the other 



78 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

shore. At night the entire coast was 
illuminated; the bridge was one great 
festival, brilliant but brief. Caligula 
had wearied of it all. At a signal 
the multitude of guests he had assem- 
bled there were tossed into the sea. 
By way of a souvenir, Tiberius, 
whom he murdered, had left him the 
immensity of his treasure. "I must be 
economical or Caesar," Caligula re^ 
fleeted, and tipped a coachman a mih 
lion, rained on the people a hail of 
coin, bathed in essences, drank pearls 
dissolved in wine, set before his guests 
loaves of silver, gold omelettes, sau- 
sages of gems; sailed to the hum of 
harps on a ship that had porticoes, 
gardens, baths, bowers, spangled sails 
and a jewelled prow; removed a moun- 
tain, and put a palace where it had 
been; filled in a valley and erected a 
temple on the top; supplied a horse 
with a marble home, with ivory stalls, 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 79 

with furniture and slaves; contem- 
plated making him consul; made him 
a host instead, one that in his own 
equine name invited the fashion of 
Rome to sup with Incitatus. 

In one year Tiberius' legacy, a 
sum that amounted to four hundred 
million of our money, was spent. 
Caligula was radiant; he had achieved 
the impossible; he was a bankrupt 
god, an emperor without a copper. 
But the very splendor of that triumph 
demanded a climax. If Caligula hes- 
itated, no one knew it. On the mor- 
row the palace of the Caesars was 
turned into a lupanar, a little larger, 
a little handsomer than the others, 
but still a brothel, one of which the 
inmates were matrons of Rome and 
the keeper Jupiter Latialis. 

After that, seemingly, there was 
nothing save apotheosis. But Cali- 
gula, in the nick of time, remembered 



80 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

the ocean. At the head of an army 
he crossed Gaul, attacked it, and re- 
turned refreshed. Decidedly he had 
not exhausted everything yet. He 
recalled Tiberius' policy, and abruptly 
the world was filled again with ac- 
cusers and accused. Gold poured in 
on him, the earth paid him tribute. 
In a vast hall he danced naked on the 
wealth of nations. Once more he 
was rich, richer than ever; there 
were still illusions to be looted, other, 
dreams to be pierced; yet, even as he 
mused, conspirators were abroad. 
He loosed his pretorians. "Had 
Rome but one head!" he muttered. 
"Let them feel themselves die," he 
cried to his officers. "Let me be 
hated, but let me be feared." 

One day, as he was returning from 
the theatre, the dagger did its usual 
work. Rome had lost a genius; in 
his place there came an ass. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 81 

There is a verse in Greek to the 
effect that the blessed have children 
in three months. Livia and Augustus 
were blessed in this pleasant fashicr-. 
Three months after their marriage a 
child was born — a miracle which sur- 
prised no one aware of their previous 
intimacy. The child became a man, 
and the father of Claud, an imbecile 
whom the pretorians, after Caligula's 
death, found in a closet, shaking with 
fright, and whom for their own pro- 
tection they made emperor in his 
stead. 

Caligula had been frankly adored; 
there was in him an originality, and 
with it a grandeur and a mad magnifi- 
cence that enthralled. Then, too, he 
was young, and at his hours what the 
French call charmetcr. If at times he 
frightened, always he dazzled. Of 
course he was adored; the prodigal 
emperors always were; so were their 



82 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

successors, the wicked popes. The 
virtue and moderation, which we of 
a later day admire so much, were 
not entirely appreciated then. Man 
was still too near to nature to be 
aware of shame, and infantile enough 
to care to be surprised. In that was 
Caligula's charm; he petted his peo- 
ple and surprised them too. Claud 
wearied. Between them they assimi- 
late every contradiction, and in their 
incoherences explain that incompre- 
hensible chaos which was Rome. 
Caligula jeered at everybody, every- 
body jeered at Claud. 

The latter was a fantastic, vacillat- 
ing, abstracted, well-meaning and 
cowardly tyrant, issuing edicts in 
regard to the proper tarring of barrels, 
and rendering decisions which would 
insure the fortune of an opera-bouffe; 
declaring himself to be of the opinion 
of those who were right ; falling asleep 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 83 

on the bench, and on awakening 
announcing that he gave judgment 
in favor of those whose reasons were 
the best; slapped in the face by an 
irritable plaintiff; held down by main 
force when he wanted to leave; invit- 
ing to supper those whom he had 
killed before breakfast; answering the 
mournful salute of the gladiators with 
a grotesque ^x'^/^ vos — " Be it well too 
with you,^' a response, parenthetically, 
which the gladiators construed as a 
pardon and refused to fight; dowering 
the alphabet with three new letters 
which lasted no longer than he did; 
asserting that he would give centen- 
nial games as often as he saw fit; an 
emperor whom no one obeyed, whose 
eunuchs ruled in his stead; whose 
lackeys dispensed exiles, death, con- 
sulates and crucifixions; whose valets 
insulted the senate, insulted Rome, 
insulted the sovereign that ruled the 



84 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

world; whose people shared his con- 
sort's couch; a slipshod drunkard in a 
tattered gown — such was the gentle- 
man that succeeded Caligula and had 
Messalina for wife. 

It were curious to have seen that 
woman as Juvenal did, a veil over her 
yellow wig, hunting adventures 
through the streets of Rome, prosti- 
tuting herself in the ergastules, while 
her husband in the Forum censured 
the dissoluteness of citizens. And it 
were curious, too, to understand 
whether it was her audacity or his 
stupidity which left him the only man 
in Rome unacquainted with the pro- 
digious multiplicity and variety of her 
lovers. History has its secrets, yet, 
in connection with Messalina, there is 
one that historians have not taken the 
trouble to probe; to them she has 
been an imperial strumpet, a hetaira 
on a throne. Messalina was not that. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 85 

At heart she was probably no better 
and no worse than any other lady of 
the land, but physically she was a 
victim of nymphomania, one who to- 
day would be put through a course of 
treatment, instead of being put to 
death. When Claud at last learned, 
not the truth, but certain facts, 
namely, that some of her lovers were 
conspiring to get rid of him, he was 
not indignant; he was frightened 
to death. The conspirators were 
promptly disposed of, Messalina with 
them. Suetonius says that, a few 
days later, as he went in to supper, he 
asked why the empress did not ap- 
pear. 

Apart from the malady from which 
she suffered, were it possible to find 
an excuse for her conduct, the excuse 
would be Claud. The purple which 
made Caligula mad, made him an 
idiot; and when in course of time he 



86 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

was served with a succulent poison, 
there must have been many conjec- 
tures in Rome as to what the empire 
would next produce. 

The empire was extremely fecund, 
enormously vast. About Rome ex- 
tended an immense circle of provinces 
and cities that were wholly hers. 
Without that circle was another, the 
sovereignty exercised over vassals 
and allies; beyond that, beyond the 
Rhine on one side, were the silenced 
Teutons; beyond the Euphrates on 
the other, the hazardous Parthians, 
while remotely to the north there 
extended the enigmas of barbarism; 
to the south, those semi-fabulous 
regions where geography ceased to 
be. 

Little by little, through the pa- 
tience of a people that felt i',self 
eternal, this immensity had been 
assimilated and fused. A few for- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 81 

tresses and legions on the frontiers, a 
stretch of soldiery at any spot an in- 
vasion might be feared; a little tact, 
a maternal solicitude, and that was 
all. Rome governed unarmed, or 
perhaps it might be more exact to 
say she did not govern at all; she 
was the mistress of a federation of 
realms and republics that governed 
themselves, in whose government she 
was content, and from whom she ex- 
acted little, tribute merely, and obei- 
sance to herself. Her strength was 
not in the sword; the lioness roared 
rarely, often slept; it was the fear 
smaller beasts had of her awakening 
that made them docile; once aroused, 
those indolent paws could do terrible 
work, and it was well not to excite 
them. When the Jews threatened to 
revolt, Agrippa warned them: "Look 
at Rome ; look at her well ; her arms 
are invisible, her troops are afar; she 



88 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

rules, not by them, but by the cer- 
tainty of her power. If 3^ou rebel, the 
invisible sword will flash, and what 
can you do against Rome armed, 
when Rome unarmed frightens the 
world?" 

The argument was pertinent and 
suggestive, but the secret of Rome's 
ascendency consisted in the fact that 
where she conquered she dwelt. 
Wherever the eagles pounced, Rome 
multiplied herself in miniature. In 
the army was the nation, in the legion 
the city. Where it camped, presto! 
a judgment seat and an altar. On 
the morrow there was a forum; in a 
week there were paved avenues; in a 
fortnight, temples, porticoes; in a 
month you felt yourself at home. 
Rome built with a magic that startled 
as surely as the glint of her sword. 
Time and again the nations whom 
Caesar encountered planned to elim- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 89 

inate his camp. When they reached 
it the camp had vanished; in its place 
was a walled, impregnable town. 

As the standards lowered before 
that town, the pomoerium was traced. 
Within it the veteran found a home, 
without it a wife; and, the family 
established, the legion that had con- 
quered the soil with the sword, sub- 
sisted on it with the plow. Presently 
there were priests there, aqueducts, 
baths, theatres and games, all the 
marvel of imperial elegance and vice. 
When the aborigine wandered that 
way, his seduction was swift. 

The enemy that submitted became 
a subject, not a slave. Rome com- 
manded only the free. If his goods 
were taxed, his goods remained his 
own, his personal liberty untram- 
meled. His land had become part of a 
new province, it is true, but provided 
he did not interest himself in such mat- 



90 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

ters as peace and war, not only was 
he free to manage his own affairs, but 
that land, were it at the uttermost 
end of the earth, might, in recompense 
of his fidelity, come to be regarded 
as within the Italian territory; as such, 
sacred, inviolate, free from taxes, and 
he a citizen of Rome, senator even, 
emperor ! 

Conquest once solidified, the rest 
was easy. Tattered furs were replaced 
by the tunic and uncouth idioms by 
the niceties of Latin speech. In some 
cases, where the speech had been 
beaten in with the hilt of the sword, 
the accent was apt to be rough, but a 
generation, two at most, and there 
were sweethearts and swains quoting 
Horace in the moonlight, naively un- 
aware that only the verse of the 
Greeks could pleasure the Roman ear. 

Of the principalities and kingdoms 
that of their own wish [a wish often 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 91 

suggested, and not always amicably 
either] had become allies of Rome 
and mingled their freedom with hers, 
nothing worth mentioning was re- 
quired; they entered into an alliance 
whereby in return for Rome's patron- 
age and protection they agreed to 
have a proper regard for the dignity 
of the Roman people and to have no 
other friends or enemies than those 
that were Rome's — a formula ex- 
quisite in the civility with which it 
exacted the renunciation of every in- 
herent right. *'I have obeyed," wrote 
a king to the senate. *'I have obeyed 
your deputy as I would have obeyed 
a god." "And you have done wisely," 
the senate answered, a reply, which, 
in its terseness, tells all. 

Diplomacy and the plow, such were 
Rome's methods. As for herself she 
fought, she did not till. Italy, devas- 
tated by the civil wars, was unculti- 



92 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

vated, cut up into vast unproductive 
estates. From one end to the other 
there wsls barely a trace of agricul- 
ture, not a sign of traffic. You met 
soldiers, cooks, petty tradesmen, glad- 
iators, philosophers, patricians, market 
gardeners, lazzaroni and millionaires; 
the merchant and the farmer, never. 
Rome's resources were in distant com- 
mercial centers, in taxes and tribute; 
her wealth had come of pillage and 
exaction. Save her strength, she had 
nothing of her own. Her religion, liter- 
ature, art, philosophy, luxury and cor- 
ruption, everything had come from 
abroad. In Greece were her artists; in 
Africa, Gaul and Spain, her agricultur- 
ists; in Asia her artisans. Her own 
breasts were sterile. When she gave 
birth it was to a litter of monsters, 
sometimes to a genius, by accident to 
a poet. She consumed, she did not pro- 
duce. It was because of that she fell. 



V. 

NERO. 



93 



V. 



NERO. 



"Save a monster, what can you 
expect from Agrippina and myself?'' 

It was Domitius, Nero's father, 
who made this ingenious remark. 
He was not a good man; he was not 
even a good-looking man — a brawHng 
trickster who, in spite of his wealth, 
which was great, appears to have 
pleased no one as thoroughly as he 
did his sister, whom he pleased too 
well. But such capacity for wicked- 
ness as he possessed paled beside that 
of Agrippina, who poisoned him when 
Nero's birth insured the heritage of 
his wealth. 

In all its galleries history has no 
other portrait such as hers. Cali- 
gula's sister, his mistress as well, 



95 



96 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

prostituted by him, exiled and threat- 
ened with death, her eyes dazzled and 
nerves unstrung by the impossiibilities 
of that fabulous reign, it was not 
until Claud, her uncle, recalled her 
and Messalina disappeared, that the 
empress awoke. She too, she deter- 
mined, would rule, and the J7is osculi 
aiding, she married out of hand that 
imbecile uncle of hers, on whose knee 
she had played as a child. 

The day of the wedding a young 
patrician, expelled from the senate, 
killed himself. Agrippina had accused 
him of incest, not because he was guilty, 
nor yet because the possibility of such 
a sin shocked her, but because he 
was betrothed to Octavia, a slender 
maiden with blue, pathetic eyes, who 
happened to be Claud's daughter, and 
who, Agrippina determined, should 
be Nero's wife. Presently^Caligula's 
widow, an old rival of her own, a 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 97 

lady who had thought she would like 
to be empress twice, and whom 
Claud had eyed grotesquely, was dis- 
encumbered of three million worth of 
emeralds, with which she heightened 
her beauty, and told very civilly that 
it was time to die. So too disap- 
peared a Calpurina, a Lepida; women 
young, rich, handsome, impure, and 
as such dangerous to Agrippina's 
peace of mind. The legality of her 
crimes was so absolute that the mere 
ownership of an enviable object was 
a cause for death. A senator 
had a villa which pleased her; he was 
invited to die. A knight had a pair 
of those odorous murrhine vases, 
which Pompey had found in Armenia, 
and 'which on their first appearance 
set Rome wild; he, too, was invited 
to die. 

But, though Agrippina dealt in 
death, she dealt in seductions too. 



98 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Rome, that had adored CaHgula, 
promptly fell under his sister's sway. 
There was a splendor in her eyes, 
which so many crimes had lit; in her 
carriage there was such majest}^ the 
pomp with which she surrounded her- 
self was so magnificent, that Rome, 
enthralled, applauded. Beyond, on 
the Rhine, a city which is to-day 
Cologne, rose in honor of her sover- 
eignty. To her wishes the senate 
was subservient, to her indiscretions 
blind. Claud, who meanwhile had 
been wholly sightless, suddenly showed 
signs of discernment. A woman, 
charged with illicit commerce, 
was brought to his tribunal. He 
condemed her, of course. "In my 
case," he explained, "matrimony has 
not been successful, but the fate that 
destined me to marry impure women 
destined me also to punish them." It 
was then that Agrippina ordered of 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 99 

Locusta that famous stew of poison 
and mushrooms, which Nero, in allu- 
sion to Claud's apotheosis, called the 
food of the gods. The fate that des- 
tined Claud to marry Agrippina des- 
tined her to kill him. 

It was under her care, between a 
barber and a ballerine, amid the 
shamelessness of his stepfather's place, 
where any day he could have seen his 
mother beckon indolently to a centu- 
rion and pointing to some lover who 
had ceased to please, make the gesture 
which signified Death, that the young 
Enobarbus — Nero, as he subsequently 
called himself — was trained for the 
throne. 

He had entered the world like a 
tiger cub, feet first; a circumstance 
which is said to have disturbed his 
mother, and well it might. During 
his adolescence that lady made hei - 
self feared. He was but seventeen. 



100 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

when the pretorians called upon him 
to rule the world; and at the time an 
ingenuous lad, one who blushed like 
Lalage, very readily, particularly at 
the title of Father of the Country, 
which the senate was anxious to give 
him; endowed with excellent instincts, 
which he had got no one knew whence ; 
a trifle petit maitre^ perhaps, perfum- 
ing the soles of his feet, and careful 
about the arrangement of his yellow 
curls, but withal generous, modest, 
sympathetic — in short, a flower in a 
cesspool, a youth not over well-fitted 
to reign. But his mother was there; 
as he developed so did his fear of her, 
to such proportions even that he gave 
certain orders, and his mother was 
killed. That duel between mother 
and son, terrible in its intensity and 
unnameable horror, even the Borgias 
could not surpass. Tacitus has told 
it, dramatically, as was his wont, but 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 101 

he told it in Latin, in which tongue 
it had best remain. 

At that time the ingenuous lad had 
disappeared. The cub was full-grown. 
Besides, he had tasted blood. Octa- 
via, the slender maiden, who with her 
brother, Britannicus, and her sister, 
Antonia, had been his playmates; who 
was almost his own sister; whose ear- 
liest memories interlinked with his, 
and who had become his wife, had 
been put to death; not that she had 
failed to please, but because a lady, 
Sabina Poppcea, who, Tacitus says, 
lacked nothing except virtue, had de- 
clined to be his mistress. At the 
time Sabina was married. But 
divorce was easy. Sabina got one at 
the bar; Nero with the axe. The 
twain were then united. Nero seems 
to have loved her greatly, a fact, as 
Suetonius puts it, which did not pre- 
vent him from kicking her to death. 



102 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Already he had poisoned Britannicus, 
and with Octavia decapitated and 
Agrippina gone, of the imperial house 
there remained but Antonia and him- 
self. The latter he invited to marry 
him; she declined. He invited her to 
die. He was then alone, the last of 
his ra^e. Monsters never engender. 
A thinker who passed that way 
thought him right to have killed his 
mother; her crime was in giving him 
birth. 

Therewith he was popular; more 
so even than Caligula, who was a poet, 
and as such apart from the crowd, 
while Nero was frankly canaille — well- 
meaning at that — which Caligula 
never was. During the early 3^ears 
of his reign he could not do good 
enough. The gladiators were not 
permitted to die; he would have no 
shedding of blood; the smell of it was 
distasteful. He would listen to no 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 103 

denunciations; when a decree of death 
was brought to him to sign, he re- 
gretted that he knew how to write. 
Rome had never seen a gentler prince, 
nor yet one more splendidly lavish. 
The people had not only the necessities 
of life, but the luxuries, the superflui- 
ties, too. For days and days in the 
Forum there was an incessant shower 
of tickets that were exchangeable, not 
for bread or trivial sums, but for gems, 
pictures, slaves, fortunes, ships, villas 
and estates. The creator of that 
shower was bound to be adored. 

It was that, no doubt, which awoke 
him. A city like Rome, one that had 
over a million inhabitants, could make 
a terrific noise, and when that noise 
was applause, the recipient found it 
heady. Nero got drunk on popularity, 
and heredity aiding where the prince 
had been emerged the cad, a poseur 
that bored, a beast that disgusted, a 



104 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

caricature of the impossible in a crim- 
son frame. 

*'What an artist the world is to 
lose!" he exclaimed as he died; 
and artist he was, but in the Roman 
sense; one that enveloped in the same 
contempt the musician, acrobat and 
actor; one that branded every public 
performer with an appellation which 
even yet has not been rehabilitated. 
It was the artist that played the flute 
while gladiators died and lovers em- 
braced; it was the artist that enter- 
tained the crowd. 

As an artist Nero would have made 
the fortune of a dozen concert-halls. 
Fancy the attraction — an emperor 
before the footlights; but fancy the 
boredom also. The joy at the an- 
nouncement of his first appearance was 
so great that thanks were offered to 
the gods; and the verses he was to 
sing, graven in gold, were dedicated 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 105 

to the Capitoline Jove. The joy was 
brief. The exits of the theatre were 
closed. It was treason to attempt to 
leave. People pretended to be dead, 
in order to be carried out, and well 
they might. The star was a fat man 
with a husky tenorino voice, who sang 
drunk and half-naked to a protecting 
claque of ten thousand hands. 

But it was in the circus that Nero 
was at his best; there, no matter 
though he were last in the race, it 
was to him the palm was awarded, or 
rather it was he that awarded the 
palm to himself, and then quite mag- 
nificently shouted, "Nero, Caesar, vic- 
tor in the race, gives his crown to 
the People of Rome!" 

On the stage he had no rivals, and 
by chance did one appear, he was 
invited to die. In that respect he 
was artistically susceptible. When 
he turned acrobat, the statues of 



106 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

former victors were tossed in the 
latrinse. Yet, as competitors were 
needed, and moreover, all emperor 
that he was, as he, singly, could fill 
neither a stage nor a track, it was the 
nobility of Rome that he ordered to 
appear with him. The nobility was 
willing enough to appear, only there 
were few that cared to be forced, and 
for this command the unforgiving 
nobility never forgave him. On the 
other hand, the proletariat loved him 
all the better. What greater salve 
could it have than the sight of the 
conquerors of the world entertaining 
the conquered, lords amusing their 
lackeys } 

Greece meanwhile sent him crowns 
and prayers; crowns for anticipated 
victories, prayers that he would come 
and win them. Homage so delicate 
was not to be disdained. Nero set 
forth, an army at his heels; a legion 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 107 

of claqueurs, a phalanx of musicians, 
cohorts of comedians, and with these 
for retinue, through sacred groves that 
Homer knew, through intervales 
which Hesiod sang, through a year of 
festivals he wandered, alwa3^s victori- 
ous. It was he who conquered at 
Olympia; it was he who conquered 
at Corinth. No one could withstand 
him. Alone in history he won in 
every game, and with eighteen hun- 
dred crowns as trophies of war he re- 
peated Caesar's triumph. In a robe 
immaterial as a moonbeam, the 
Olympian wreath on his curls, the 
Isthmian laurel in his hand, his army 
behind him, the clown that was em- 
peror entered Rome. Victims were 
immolated as he passed, the Via Sacra 
was strewn with saffron, the day 
was rent with acclaiming shouts. 
Throughout the empire sacrifices 
were ordered. Old people that lived 



108 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

in the country fancied him, Philostra- 
tus says, the conqueror of new na- 
tions, and sacrificed with dehght. 

But if as artist he bored everybody 
to death, he was yet an admirable 
impresario. The spectacles he gave 
were unique. At one which was held 
in the Taurian amphitheatre it must 
have been delightful to assist. Fancy 
eighty thousand people on ascending 
galleries, protected from the sun by a 
canopy of spangled silk; an arena 
three acres large carpeted with sand, 
cinnabar and borax, and in that arena 
death in every form, on those galleries 
colossal delight. 

The lowest gallery, immediately 
above the arena, was a wide terrace 
where the senate sat. There were 
the dignitaries of the em.pire, and 
with them priests in their sacerdotal 
robes; vestals in linen, their hair 
arranged in the six braids that were 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 109 

symbolic of virginity; swarms of 
oriental princes, rainbows of foreign 
ambassadors; and in the centre, the 
imperial pulvinar, an enclosed pavil- 
ion, in which Nero lounged, a 
mignon at his feet. 

In the gallery above were the 
necklaced knights, their tunics bor- 
dered with the augusticlave, their 
deep-blue cloaks fastened to the 
shoulder; and there, too, in their wide 
white togas, were the citizens of 
Rome. 

Still higher the people sat. In the 
topmost gallery were the women, and 
in a separate enclosure a thousand 
musicians answered the cries of the 
multitude with the blare and the 
lauo^h of brass. 

Beneath the terraces, behind the 
barred doors that punctuated the 
marble wall which circled the arena, 
were Mauritian panthers that had 



110 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

been entrapped with rotten meat; 
hippopotami from Sa'is, lured by the 
smell of carrots into pits; the rhinoc- 
eros of Gaul, taken with the net; lions, 
lassoed in the deserts; Lucanian 
bears, Spanish bulls; and, in remoter 
dens, men, unarmed, that waited. 

By way of foretaste for better 
things, a handful of criminals, local 
desperadoes, an impertinent slave, a 
machinist, who in a theatre the night 
before had missed an effect — these, 
together with a negligent usher, were 
tossed one after the other naked into 
the ring, and bound to a scaffold that 
surmounted a miniature hill. At a 
signal the scaffold fell, the hill crum- 
bled, and from it a few hyenas issued, 
who indolently devoured their prey. 

With this for prelude, the gods 
avenged and justice appeased, a 
rhinoceros ambled that way, stimu- 
lated from behind by the point of a 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. Ill 

spear; and in a moment the hyenas 
were disemboweled, their legs quiv- 
ering in the air. Throughout the 
arena other beasts, tied together with 
long cords, quarreled in couples; 
there was the bellow of bulls, and the 
moan of leopards tearing at their 
flesh, a flight of stags, and the long, 
clean spring of the panther. 

Presently the arena was cleared, 
the sand re-raked and the Bestiarii 
advanced — Sarmatians, nourished on 
mares' milk; Sicambrians, their hair 
done up in chignons; horsemen from 
Thessaly, Ethiopian warriors, Par- 
thian archers, huntsmen from the 
steppes, their different idioms uniting 
in a single cry — "Caesar, we salute 
you." The sunlight, filtering through 
the spangled canopy, chequered their 
tunics with burning spots, danced on 
their spears and helmets, dazzled the 
spectators' eyes. From above de- 



112 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

scended the caresses of flutes; the air 
was sweet with perfumes, aHve with 
multicolored motes; the terraces were 
parterres of blending hues, and into 
that splendor a hundred lions, their 
tasseled tails sweeping the sand, 
entered obliquely. 

The mob of the Bestiarii had gone. 
In the middle of the arena, a band of 
Ethiopians, armed with arrows, 
knives and spears, knelt, their oiled 
black breasts uncovered. 

Leisurely the lions turned their 
huge, intrepid heads; to their jowls 
wide creases came. There was a 
glitter of fangs, a shiver that moved 
the mane, a flight of arrows, mount- 
ing murmurs, the crouch of beasts 
preparing to spring, a deafening roar, 
and, abruptly, a tumultuous mass, the 
suddenness of knives, the snap of 
bones, the cry of the agonized, the 
fury of beasts transfixed, the shrieks 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 113 

of the mangled, a combat hand to 
fang, from which Hons fell back, their 
jaws torn asunder, while others re- 
treated, a black body swaying be- 
tween their terrible teeth, and, insen- 
sibly, a descending quiet. 

At once there was an eruption 
of bellowing elephants, painted and 
trained for slaughter, that trampled 
on wounded and dead. At a call 
from a keeper the elephants dis- 
appeared. There was a rush of mules 
and slaves; the carcasses and corpses 
vanished, the toilet of the ring was 
made; and then came a plunge of 
bulls, mists of vapor about their long, 
straight horns, their anxious eyes 
dilated. Beyond was a troop of 
ThessaHans. For a moment the bulls 
snorted, pawing the sand with their 
fore-feet, as though trying to remem- 
ber what they were doing there. Yet 
instantly they seemed to know, and 



114 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

with lowered heads, they plunged on 
the point of spears. But no matter, 
horses went down by the hundred; 
and as the bulls tired of goring the 
dead, they fought each other; fought 
rancorously, fought until weariness 
overtook them, and the surviving 
Thessalians leaped on their backs, 
twisted their horns, and threw them 
down, a sword through their throb- 
bing throats. 

Successively the arena was occupied 
by bears, by panthers, by dogs trained 
for the chase, by hunters and hunted. 
But the episode of the morning was 
a dash of wild elephants, attacked on 
either side; a moment of sheer delight, 
in which the hunters were tossed up 
on the terraces, tossed back again by 
the spectators, and trampled to death. 

With that for bouquet the first part 
of the performance was at an end. 
By way of interlude, the ring was 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 115 

peopled with acrobats, who flew up 
in the air Hke birds, formed pyramids 
together, on the top of which Httle 
boys swung and smiled. There was 
a troop of trained lions, their manes 
gilded, that walked on tight-ropes, 
wrote obscenities in Greek, and danced 
to cymbals which one of them played. 
There were geese-fights, wonderful 
combats between dwarfs and women; 
a chariot race, in which bulls, painted 
white, held the reins, standing upright 
while drawn at full speed; a chase of 
ostriches, and feats of haute ecole on 
zebras from Madagascar. 

The interlude at an end, the sand 
was re-raked, and preceded by the 
pomp of lictors, interminable files of 
gladiators entered, holding their knives 
to Nero that he might see that they 
were sharp. It was then the eyes of 
the vestals lighted; artistic death was 
their chiefest joy, and in a moment, 



116 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

when the spectacle began and the first 
gladiator fell, above the din you could 
hear their cry ^''Hic habetf'' and 
watch their delicate thumbs reverse. 

There was no cowardice in that 
arena. If by chance any hesitation 
were discernible, instantly there were 
hot irons, the sear of which revivi- 
fied courage at once. But that was 
rare. The gladiators fought for ap- 
plause, for liberty, for death; fought 
manfully, skillfully, terribly, too, and 
received the point of the sword or the 
palm of the victor, their expression 
unchanged, the face unmoved. 
Among them, some provided with a 
net and prodigiously agile, pursued 
their adversaries hither and thither, 
trying to entangle them first and kill 
them later. Others, protected by 
oblong shields and armed with short, 
sharp swords, fought hand-to-hand. 
There were still others, mailed horse- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 117 

men, who fought with the lance, 
and charioteers that dealt death from 
high Briton cars. 

As a spectacle it was unique; one 
that the Romans, or more exactly, 
their predecessors, the Etruscans, had 
devised to train their children for 
war and allay the fear of blood. It 
had been serviceable, indeed, and 
though the need of it had gone, still 
the institution endured, and in endur- 
ing constituted the chief delight of 
the vestals and of Rome. By means 
of it a bankrupt became consul and 
an emperor beloved. It had stayed 
revolutions, it was the tax of the pro- 
letariat on the rich. Silver and bread 
were for the individual, but spectacles 
were for the crowd. 

During the pauses of the combats 
the dead were removed by men 
masked as Mercury, god of hell; red 
irons, that others, masked as Charon, 



118 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

bore, being first applied as safeguard 
against swoon or fraud. And when, 
to the kisses of flutes, the last palm 
had been awarded, the last death 
acclaimed, a ballet was given; that of 
Paris and Venus, which Apuleius has 
described so well, and for afterpiece 
the romance of Pasiphae and the 
bull. Then, as night descended, so 
did torches, too; the arena was 
strewn with vermilion; tables were 
set, and to the incitement of crotals, 
Lydians danced before the multitude, 
toasting the last act of that wonderful 
day. 

It was with such magnificence that 
Nero showed the impresario's skill, 
the politician's adroitness. Where 
the artist, which he claimed to be, 
really appeared, was in the refurbish- 
ing of Rome. 

In spite of Augustus' boast, the 
city was not by any means of marble. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 119 

It was filled with crooked little 
streets, with the atrocities of the 
Tarquins, with houses unsightly and 
perilous, with the moss and dust of 
ages; it compared with Alexandria 
as London compares with Paris; it 
had a splendor of its own, but a 
splendor that could be heightened. 

Whether the conflagration which 
occurred at that time was the result 
of accident or design is uncertain 
and in any event immaterial. 
Tacitus says that when it began Nero 
was at Antium, in which case he 
must have hastened to return, for ad- 
mitting that he did not originate the 
fire, it is a matter of agreement that 
he collaborated in it. In quarters 
where it showed symptoms of weak- 
ness it was by his orders coaxed to 
new strength; colossal stone build- 
ings, on which it had little effect, 
were battered down with catapults. 



120 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Fire is a perfect poet. No de- 
signer ever imagined the surprises it 
creates, and when, at the end of the 
week three-fourths of the city was in 
ruins, the beauty that reigned there 
must have been subHme. That it in- 
spired Nero is presumable. The 
palace on the Palatine, which 
Tiberius embellished and Caligula 
enlarged, had gone; in its place rose 
another, aflame with gold. Before it 
Neropolis extended, a city of tri- 
umphal arches, enchanted temples, 
royal dwellings, shimmering porti- 
coes, glittering roofs, and wide, hos- 
pitable streets. It was fair to the 
eye, purely Greek; and on its heart, 
from the Circus Maximus to the 
Forum's edge, the new and gigantic 
palace shone. Before it was a lake, a 
part of which Vespasian drained and 
replaced with an amphitheatre that 
covered eight acres. About that 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 121 

lake were separate edifices that 
formed a city in themselves; between 
them and the palace, a statue of Nero 
in gold and silver mounted precipi- 
tately a hundred and twenty feet — a 
statue which it took twenty-four ele- 
phants to move. About it were 
green savannahs, forest reaches, the 
call of bird and deer, while in the dis- 
tance, fronted by a stretch of columns 
a mile in length, the palace stood — a 
palace so ineffably charming that on 
the day of reckoning may it outbal- 
ance a few of his sins. Even the cel- 
lars were frescoed. The baths were 
quite comfortable; you had waters 
salt or sulphurous at will. The din- 
ing halls had ivory ceilings from 
which flowers fell, and wainscots that 
changed at each service. The walls 
were alive with the glisten of gems, 
with marbles rarer than jewels. In 
one hall was a dome of sapphire, a 



122 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

floor of malachite, crystal columns 
and red-gold walls. 

"At last," Nero murmured, "I am 
lodged like a man." 

No doubt. Yet in a mirror he 
would have seen a bloated beast in a 
flowered gown, the hair done up in a 
chignon, the skin covered with erup- 
tions, the eyes circled and yellow; 
a woman who had hours when she 
imitated a virgin at bay, others when 
she was wife, still others when she 
expected to be a mother, and that 
woman, a senatorial patent of divinity 
aiding, was god — Apollo's peer, im- 
perator, chief of the army, pontifix 
maximus, master of the world, with 
the incontestible right of life and death 
over every being in the dominions. 

It had taken the fresh-faced lad who 
blushed so readily, just fourteen years 
to effect that change. Did he regret 
it.^ And what should Nero regret .^^ 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 123 

Nothing, perhaps, save that at the 
moment when he declared himself to 
be lodged like a man, he had not 
killed himself like one. But of that 
he was incapable. Had he known 
what the future held, possibly he 
might have imitated that apotheosis 
of vulgarity in which Sardanapalus 
eclipsed himself, but never could he 
have died with the good breeding 
and philosophy of Cato, for neither 
good breeding nor philosophy was in 
him. Nero killed himself like a cow- 
ard, yet that he did kill himself, in no 
matter what fashion, is one of the few 
things that can be said in his favor. 

Those days differed from ours. 
There were circumstances in which 
suicide was regarded as the simplest 
of duties. Nero did his duty, but not 
until he was forced to it, and even then 
not until he had been asked several 
times whether it was so hard to die. 



124 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

The empire had wearied of him. In 
NeropoHs his popularity had gone as 
popularity ever does; the conflagration 
had killed it. 

Even as he wandered, lyre in 
hand, a train of Lesbians and ped- 
erasts at his heels, through those halls 
which had risen on the ruins, and which 
inexhaustible Greece had furnished 
with a fresh crop of white immortals 
the world rebelled. Afar on the out- 
skirts of civilization a vassal, ashamed 
of his vassalage, declared war, not 
against Rome, but against an emperor 
that played the flute. In Spain, in 
Gaul, the legions were choosing other 
chiefs. The provinces, depleted by 
imperial exactions, outwearied by the 
increasing number of accusers, whose 
accusations impoverishing them 
served only to multiply the prodigal- 
ities of their Csesar, revolted. 

Suddenly Nero found himself alone. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 125 

As the advancing rumor of rebellion 
reached him, he thought of flight; 
there was no one that would accom- 
pany him. He called to the preto- 
rians; they would not hear. Through 
the immensity of his palace he sought 
one friend. The doors would not 
open. He returned to his apartment; 
the guards had gone. Then terror 
siezed him. He was afraid to die, 
afraid to live, afraid of his solitude, 
afraid of Rome, afraid of himself; but 
what frightened him most was that 
everyone had lost their fear of him. 
It was time to go, and a slave aiding, 
he escaped in disguise from Rome, 
and killed himself, I'eluctantly, in a 
hovel. 

^^^ualis artifex pereof'' he is 
reported to have muttered. Say 
rather, qualis moechus. 



VI. 

THE HOUSE OF FLAVIA. 

It was in those days that the nebu* 

lous figure of Apollonius of Tyana 

appeared and disappeared in Rome. 

Hrs speech, a wayward comminghng 

of puerihty and charm, Philostratus has 

preserved. Rumor had preceded him. 

It was said that he knew everything, 

save the caresses of women ; that he was 

famiHar with all languages; with the 

speech of bird and beast; with that of 

silence, for silence is a language too; 

that he had prayed in the Temple of 

Jupiter Lycceus, where men lost their 

shadows, their lives as well; that he 

had undergone the eighty initiations 
of Mithra; that he had perplexed the 

magi; confuted the gymnosophists; 

that he foretold the future, healed the 

sick, raised the dead; that beyond the 

129 



130 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Himalayas he had encountered every 
species of ferocious beast, except the 
tyrant, and that it was to see one he 
had come to Rome. 

Nero was singularly free from pre 
judice. Apart from a doll which he 
worshipped he had no superstitions. 
He had the plain man's dislike of phi- 
losophy; Seneca had sickened him of 
it, perhaps; but he was sensitive, not 
that he troubled himself particularly 
about an}' lies that were told of him, 
but he did object to people who went 
about telling the truth. In that re- 
spect he was not unique; we are all 
like him, but he had ways of stilling 
the truth which were imperial and his 
own. 

Promptly on Apollonius he loosed 
his bull-dog Tigellin, prefect of police. 

Tigellin caught him. ^'What have 
you with you?" he asked. 

"Continence, Justice, Temperance, 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 131 

Strength and Patience," Apollonius 
answered. 

"Your slaves, I suppose. Make out 
a list of them." 

Apollonius shook his head. "They 
are not my slaves; they are my mas- 
ters." 

"There is but one," Tigellin re- 
torted — "Nero. Why do you not 
fear him.^" 

"Because the god that made him 
terrible made me without fear." 

"I will leave you your liberty," 
muttered the startled Tigellin, "but 
you must give bail." 

"And who," asked Apollonius su- 
perbly, "would bail a man whom no 
one can enchain.^" Therewith he 
turned and disappeared. 

At that time Nero was in training 
to suffocate a lion in the arena. A 
few days later he killed himself. 
Simultaneously there came news from 



132 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Syracuse. A woman of rank had 
given birth to a child with three 
heads. Apollonius examined it. 

''There will be three emperors at 
once," he announced. "But their 
reign will be shorter than that of 
kings on the stage." 

Within that year Galba, who was 
emperor for an instant, died at the 
gates of Rome. Vitellius, after being 
emperor in little else than dream, was 
butchered in the Forum; and Otho, 
in that fine antique fashion, killed 
himself in Gaul. Apollonius mean- 
while was in Alexandria, predicting 
the purple to Vespasian, the rise of 
the House of Flavia; invoking Jupiter 
in his protege's behalf; and presently, 
the prediction accomplished, he was 
back in Rome, threatening Domitian, 
warning him that the House of Flavia 
would fall. 

The atmosphere then was charged 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 133 

with the marvelous; the world was 
filled with prodigies, with strange 
gods, beckoning chimeras and cred- 
ulous crowds. Belief in the super- 
natural was absolute; the occult 
sciences, astrology, magic, divination, 
all had their adepts. In Greece there 
were oracles at every turn, and with 
them prophets who taught the art of 
adultery and how to construe the past. 
On the banks of the Rhine there 
were virgins who were regarded as 
divinities, and in Gaul were men who 
were held wholly divine. 

Jerusalem too had her follies. 
There was Simon the Magician, 
founder of gnosticism, father of every 
heresy, Messiah to the Jews, Jupiter 
to the Gentiles — an impudent self- 
made god, who pretended to float in 
the air, and called his mistress 
Minerva — a deification, parentheti- 
cally, which was accepted by Nicho- 



134 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

las, his successor, a deacon of the 
church, who raised her to the eighth 
heaven as patron saint of lust. To 
him, as to Simon, she was Ennoia, 
Prunikos, Helen of Troy. She had 
been Delilah, Lucretia. She had 
prostituted herself to every nation 
she had sung in the byways, and hid 
den robbers in the vermin of her bed 
But by Simon she was rehabilitated 
It was she, no doubt, of whom Cali 
gula thought when he beckoned to 
the moon. In Rome she had her 
statue, and near it was one to Simon, 
the holy god. 

But of all manifestations of divinity 
the most patent was that which haloed 
Vespasian. He expected it, Sueton- 
ius says, but it is doubtful if anyone 
else did. One night he dreamed that 
an era of prosperity was to dawn for 
him and his when Nero lost a tooth. 
The next day he was shown one 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 135 

which had just been drawn from the 
emperor's mouth. But that was 
nothing. Presently at Carmel the 
Syrian oracle assured him that he 
would be successful in whatever 
enterprise he undertook. From 
Rome word came that, while the 
armies of Vitellius and Otho were 
fighting, two eagles had fought above 
them, and that the victor had been 
despatched by a third eagle that had 
come from the East. In Alexandria 
Serapis whispered to him. The entire 
menagerie of Egypt proclaimed him 
king. Apis bellowed, Anubis barked. 
Isis visited him unveiled. The lame 
and the blind pressed about him; he 
cured them with a touch. There 
could be no reasonable doubt now; 
surely he was a god. On his shoul- 
ders Apollonius threw the purple, and 
Vespasian set out for Rome. 

His antecedents were less propi- 



136 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

tious. The descendent of an obscure 
centurion, Titus Flavius Petronius by 
name, who, by the way, was in no 
wise connected with the author of the 
Satyricon, Vespasian in early days 
had been a veterinary surgeon; then, 
having got Cahgula's ear, he flattered 
it abominably. Caligula disposed of, 
he flattered Claud, or what amounted 
to the same thing, Narcissus, Claud's 
chamberlain. Through the influence 
of that eunuch he became a lieutenant, 
fought on remote frontiers — fought 
well, too — so well even that. Narcissus 
gone, he felt Agrippina watching him, 
and knowing the jealousy of her eyes, 
prudently kept quiet until that lady 
died. 

With Nero he promenaded through 
Greece — sat at the Olympian games 
and fell asleep when his emperor 
sang. Treason of that high nature — 
sacrilege, rather, for Nero was then 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 137 

a god — might have been overlooked, 
had it occurred but once, for Nero 
could be magnanimous when he chose. 
But it always occurred. To Nero's 
tremolo invariably came the accom- 
paniment of Vespasian's snore. He 
was dreaming of that tooth, no doubt. 
"I am not a soporific, am I?" Nero 
gnashed at him, and banished the 
blasphemer forever from his sight. 

For a while Vespasian lived in con- 
stant expectation of some civil 
message inviting him to die. Finally 
it came, only he was invited to die at 
the head of an arni}^ which Nero had 
projected against seditious Jews. 
When he returned, leaving his son 
Titus to attend to Jerusalem, it was 
as emperor. 

Onl}' a moment before Vitellius 
had been disposed of. That curious 
glutton, whom the Rhenish legions 
had chosen because of his off-hand 



138 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

familiarity, would willingly have fled 
had the soldiery let him. But not at 
all; they wanted a prince of their own 
manufacture. They knew nothing of 
Vespasian, cared less; and into the 
Capitol they chased the latter's par- 
tisans, his son Domitian as well. The 
besieged defended themselves with 
masterpieces, with sacred urns, the 
statues of gods, the pedestals of divin- 
ities. Suddenly the Capitol was 
aflame. Simultaneously Vespasian's 
advance guard beat at the gates. The 
besiegers turned, the mob was with 
them, and together they fought, first 
at the gates, then in the streets, in the 
Forum, retreating always, but like 
lions, their face to the foe. The vol- 
atile mob, noting the retreat, turned 
from combatant into spectator. Let 
the soldiers fight; it was their duty, 
not theirs; and, as the struggle con- 
tinued, from roof and window they 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. V2& 

eyed it with that artistic delight wliich 
the arena had developed, applauding 
the clever thrusts, abusing the van- 
quished, robbing the dead, and there- 
with pillaging the wineshops, crowding 
the lupanars. During the org}^, Vitel- 
lius was stabbed. The Flavians had 
won the day, the empire was Ves- 
pasian's. 

The use he made of it was very 
modest. In spite of his manifest di- 
vinity he had nothing in common with 
the Caesars that had gone before; he 
had no dreams of the impossible, no 
desire to frighten Jupiter or seduce 
the moon. He was a plain man, tall 
and ruddy, very coarse in speech and 
thought, open-armed and close-fisted, 
slapping senators on the back and 
keeping a sharp eye on the coppers; 
taxing the latrinae, and declaring that 
money had no smell; yet still, in com- 
parison with Claud and Nero, almost 



UO IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

the ideal; absolutely uninteresting 
also, yet doing what good he could; 
effacing at once the traces of the civil 
war, rebuilding the Capitol, calming 
the people, protecting the provinces, 
restoring to Rome the gardens of. 
Nero, clipping the wings of the Palace 
of Gold, throwing open again the 
Via Sacra, over which the Palace had 
spread; draining the lake that had 
shimmered before it, and erecting in 
its place that wonderful Colosseum 
which enchants us still. 

In spite of Serapis, Anubis and Isis, 
he had not the faintest odor of myth 
about him; he was frightfully bour- 
geois, distressingly commonplace; he 
lacked even that atmosphere of bur- 
lesque that surrounded Claud; he had 
not a vice he could call his own. 
But he was a soldier, a brave one, 
too; and if, with the acquired economy 
of a subaltern who has been obliged 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, Ul 

to live on his pay, he kept his purse- 
strings tight, they were loose enough 
if a friend was in need, and he paid 
no one the compliment of a lie. He 
was projected sheer out of the repub- 
lic. The better part of his life had 
been passed under arms; the delicate 
sensuality of Rome was foreign to 
him. It was there that Domitian had 
lived. 

It were interesting to have watched 
that young man killing flies by the 
hour, while he meditated on the atro- 
cities he was to commit— atrocities so 
numberless and needless that in the 
red halls of the Caesars he has left a 
portrait which is unique. Slender, 
graceful, handsome, as were all the 
young emperors of old Rome, his 
blue, troubled eyes took pleasure, if at 
all, only in the sight of blood. 

In accordance with the fashion 
^vhich those leaders, Caligula and 



142 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

Nero, had set, Domitian's earliest 
manners were those of an urbane and 
gentle prince. Later, when he made 
it his turn to rule, informers begged 
their bread in exile. Where they 
are not punished, he announced, 
they are encouraged. The sacrifices 
were so distressing to him that he 
forbade the immolation of oxen. He 
was disinterested, too, refusing lega- 
cies when the testator left nearer 
heirs, and therewith royally generous, 
covering his suite with presents, and 
declaring that to him avarice of all 
vices was the lowest and most vile. 
In short, you would have said another 
adolescent Nero come to Rome; there 
was the same silken sweetness of de- 
meanor, the same ready blush, in ad- 
dition to a zeal for justice and equity 
which other young emperors had 
been too thoughtless to show. 

His boyhood, too, had not been 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 143 

above reproach. The same things 
were whispered about him that had 
been shouted at Augustus. Mani- 
festly he lacked not one of the quali- 
ties which go to the making of a 
model prince. Vespasian alone had 
his doubts. 

"Mushrooms won't hurt you," he 
cried one day, as Domitian started at 
the sight of a ragout a la Sardan- 
apale^ which he fancied, possibly, was 
a la Locuste, "It is steel you should 
fear." 

At that time, with a father for 
emperor and a brother who was sack- 
ing Jerusalem, Domitian had but one 
cause for anxiety, to wit — that the 
empire might escape him. It was 
then he began his meditations over 
holocausts of flies. For hours he 
secluded himself, occupied solely with 
their slaughter. He treated them 
precisely as Titus treated the Jews, 



144 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

enjoying the quiver of their legs, the 
Httle agonies of their silent death. 

Tiberius had been in love with soli- 
tude, but never as he. Night after 
night he wandered on the terraces of 
the palace, watching the red moon 
wane white, companioned only by his 
dreams, those waking dreams that 
poets and madmen share, that Pallas 
had him in her charge, that Psyche 
was amorous of his eyes. 

Meanwhile he was nobody, a 3^oung 
gentleman merely, who might have 
moved in the best society, and 
who preferred the worst — his own. 
The sudden elevation of Vespasian 
preoccupied him, and while he knew 
that in the natural course of events his 
father would move to Olympus, yet 
there was his brother Titus, on whose 
broad shoulders the mantle of purple 
would fall. If the seditious Jews only 
knew their business! But no. Forty 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 145 

years before a white apparition on the 
way to Golgotha had cried to a hand- 
ful of women, ''The days are coming 
in which they shall say to the mount- 
ains, 'Fall on us'; to the hills, 'Cover 
us.'" And the days had come. A 
million of them had been butchered. 
From the country the}' had fled to the 
city; from Acra they had climbed to 
Zion. When the city burst into 
flames their blood put it out. Decid- 
edly they did not know their business. 
Titus, instead of being stabbed before 
Jerusalem's walls, was marching in 
triumph to Rome. 

The procession that presently en- 
tered the gates was a stream of splen- 
dor; crowns of rubies and gold; gar- 
ments that glistened with gems; gods 
on their sacred pedestals; prisoners; 
curious beasts ; Jerusalem in miniature ; 
pictures of war; booty from the Tem- 
ple, the veil, the candelabra, the cups of 

10 



146 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

gold and the Book of the Law To 
the rear rumbled the triumphal car, 
in which laureled and mantled Titus 
stood, Vespasian at his side; while, in 
the distance, on horseback, came 
Domitian — a supernumerary, ignored 
by the crowd. 

When the prisoners disappeared in 
the Tullianum and a herald shouted, 
"They have lived!" Domitian re- 
turned to the palace and hunted 
morosely for flies. The excesses of 
the festival in which Rome was 
swooning then had no delights for 
him. Presently the moon would rise, 
and then on the deserted terrace per- 
haps he would bathe a little in her 
light, and dream again of Pallas and 
of the possibilities of an emperor's 
sway, but meanwhile those blue 
troubled eyes that Psyche was amor- 
ous of were filled with envy and with 
hate. It was not that he begrudged 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 147 

Titus the triumph. The man who 
had disposed of a miUion Jews de- 
served not one triumph, but ten. It 
was the purple that haunted him. 

Domitian was then in the early 
twenties. The Temple of Peace was 
ascending; the Temple of Janus was 
closed; the empire was at rest. Side 
by side with Vespasian, Titus ruled. 
From the Euphrates came the rumor 
of some vague revolt. Domitian 
thought he would like to quell it. 
He was requested to keep quiet. It 
occurred to him that his father ought 
to be ashamed of himself to reign so 
long. He was requested to vacate 
his apartment. There were dumb 
plots in dark cellars, of which only 
the echo of a whisper has descended 
to us, but which at the time were 
quite loud enough to reach Vespa- 
sian's ears. Titus interceded. Do- 
mitian was requested to behave. 



148 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

For a while he prowled in the 
moonlight. He had been too precip- 
itate, he decided, and to allay sus- 
picion presently he went about in soci- 
ety, mingling his hours with those of 
married women. Manifestly his ways 
had mended. But Vespasian, was 
uneasy. A comet had appeared. 
The doors of the imperial mausoleum 
had opened of themselves, besides, he 
was not well. The robust and hardy 
soldier, suddenly without tangible 
cause, felt his strength give way. 
"It is nothing," his physician said; "a 
slight attack of fever." Vespasian 
shook his head; he knew things of 
which the physician was ignorant. 
"It is death," he answered, "and an 
emperor should meet it standing." 

Titus' turn came next. A violent, 
headstrong, handsome, rapacious 
prince, terribly prodigal, thoroughly 
Oriental, surrounded by dancers and 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 149 

mignons, living in state with a queen 
for mistress, startling even Rome w^ith 
the uproar of his debauches — no 
sooner was Vespasian gone than 
presto! the queen went home, the 
dancers disappeared, the debauches 
ceased, and a ruler appeared who de- 
clared he had lost a day that a good 
action had not marked; a ruler who 
could announce that no one should 
leave his presence depressed. 

Thottg'h Vespasian 'had gone, his 
reign continued. Not long, it is true, 
and punctuated by a spectacle of which 
Caligula, for all his poetry, had not 
dreamed — the burial of Pompeii. But 
a reign which, while it lasted, was 
fastidious and refined, and during 
which, again and again, Titus, who 
commanded death and whom death 
obeyed, besought Domitian, the tears 
in his eyes, to be to him a brother. 

Domitian had no such intention. 



150 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

He had a party behind him, one made 
up of old Neronians, the army of the 
discontented, who wanted a change, 
and greatly admired this charming 
young prince whose hours were passed 
in killing flies and making love to 
married women. The pretorians too 
had been seduced. Domitian could 
make captivating promises when he 
chose. 

As a consequence Titus, like Ves- 
pasian, was urneasy, and with cause. 
Dion Cassius, or rather that brute 
Xiphilin, his abbreviator, mentions the 
fever that overtook him, the same his 
father had met. It was mortal, of 
course, and the purple was Domitian 's. 

For a year and a day thereafter you 
would have thought Titus still at the 
helm. There was the same clem- 
ency, the same regard for justice, the 
same refinement and fastidiousness. 
The morose young poet had developed 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 151 

into a model monarch. The old 
Neronians were perplexed, irritated 
too; they had expected other things. 
Domitian was merely feeling the way ; 
the hand that held the sceptre was not 
quite sure of its strength, and, tenta- 
tively almost, this Prince of Virtue 
began to scrutinize the morals of 
Rome. For the first time he noticed 
that the cocottes took their airing in 
litters. But litters were not for them ! 
That abuse he put a stop to at once. 
A senator manifested an interest in 
ballet-girls; he was disgraced. The 
vestals, to whose indiscretions no one 
had paid much attention, learned the 
statutes of an archaic law, and were 
buried alive. The early distaste for 
blood was diminishing. Domitian had 
the purple, but it was not bright 
enough; he wanted it red, and what 
Domitian wanted he got. Your god 
and master orders it, was the formula 



152 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

he began to use when addressing 
the Senate and People of Rome. 

To that the people were indifferent. 
The spectacles he gave in the Flavian 
amphitheatre were too magnificently 
atrocious not to be a compensation in 
full for any eccentricity in which he 
might indulge. Besides, under Nero, 
Claud, Caligula, on en avail vu hien 
d^autres. And at those spectacles 
where he presided, crowned with a 
tiara, on which were the images of 
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, while 
grouped about him the college of Fla- 
vian flamens wore tiaras that differed 
therefrom merely in this, that they 
bore his image too, the people right 
royally applauded their master and 
their god. 

And it was just as well they did; 
Domitian was quite capable of order- 
ing everybody into the arena. As yet, 
however, he had appeared little differ- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 153 

ent fi'om any other prince. That 
Rome might understand that there was 
a difference, and also in what that dif- 
ference consisted, he gave a supper. 
The flower of fashion was invited, the 
magnates of the senate, everyone 
worth knowing was bidden, and, as is 
usual in state functions, everyone that 
was bidden came. 

The guests assembled. There was 
Domitian, gracious, suave, urbane. 
Enchantment was visible on every 
countenance. Presently enchantment 
changed to nervousness, and down the 
backs of the invited little shivers ran. 
The supper hall was draped with black; 
the ceiling, the walls, the floor, every- 
thing was basaltic. The couches were 
black, the linen was black, the slaves 
were black. Behind each guest was a 
broken column, his name inscribed 
thereon. The food was such as is pre- 
pared when death has come. The 



154 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

silence was that of the tomb. The only 
audible voice was Domitian's. He 
was talking very wittily and charm- 
ingly about murder, about proscrip- 
tions, the good informers do, the util- 
ity of the headsman, the majesty of 
the law. The guests, a trifle ill at ease, 
wished their host sweet dreams. "The 
same to you," he answered, and de- 
plored that they must go. 

On the morrow informers and 
headsmen were at work. Any pre- 
text was sufficient. Birth, wealth, 
fame, or the lack of them — anything 
whatever — and there the culprit stood, 
charged not with treason to an em- 
peror, but with impiety to a god. 
On the judgment seat Domitian sat. 
Before him the accused passed, 
and under his eyes they were 
questioned, tortured, condemned and 
killed. At once their property 
passed into the keeping of the prince. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 155 

Of that he seems to have had much 
need. The arena was expensive, but 
the drain was elsewhere. A Httle 
before, a quarrelsome people, the 
Dacians, whom it took a Trajan to 
subdue, had overrun the Danube, and 
were marching down to Rome. Domit- 
ian set out to meet them. The 
Dacians retreated, not at all because 
they were repulsed, but because Domit- 
ian thought it better warfare to pay 
them to do so. On his return after 
that victory he enjoyed a triumph as 
fair as that of Caesar. And each year 
since then the emperor of Rome had 
paid tribute to a nation of mongrel 
oafs. 

Of course he needed money. The 
informers were there and he got it, 
and with it that spectacle of torture 
and of blood which he needed too. 
Curiously, his melancholy increased; 
his good looks had gone; Psyche was 



156 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

no longer amorous of his e3^es. The 
poet that had invoked the moon passed 
hour after hour kilHng not flies, but 
beasts that were driven before him, 
and at which he shot arrows, seated 
on a stool. 

But his nights were terrible. It was 
no longer the purple that haunted 
him, it was something he could not 
define; the past, perhaps, perhaps the 
future. To his ears came strange 
sounds, the murmur of his own name, 
and suddenly silence. Then, too, 
there always seemed to be something 
behind him; something that when he 
turned disappeared. The room in which 
he slept he had covered with a polished 
m.etal that reflected everything, yet 
still the intangible was there. Once 
Pallas came in her chariot, waved him 
farewell, and disappeared, borne by 
black horses across the black night. 

The astrologers consulted had noth- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 157 

ing pleasant to say. They knew, as 
Domitian knew, that the end was near. 
So was theirs. To one of them, who 
predicted his immediate death, he en- 
quired, "What will your end be?" 
"I," answered the astrologer. "I shall 
be torn by dogs." "To the stake with 
him!" cried Domitian; "let him be 
burned alive!" Suetonius says that 
a storm put out the flames, and dogs 
devoured the flesh. Another astrolo- 
ger predicted that Domitian would die 
before noon on the morrow. In order 
to convince him of his error, Domitian 
ordered him to be executed the sub- 
sequent night. Before noon on the 
morrow Domitian was dead. 

Philostratus and Dion Cassius both 
unite in saying that at that hour 
Apollonius was at Ephesus, preaching 
to the multitude. In the middle of the 
sermon he hesitated, as though the 
thread of his discourse had escaped 



158 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

him, but in a moment he began anew. 
Again he hesitated, his eyes on the 
distant horizon; then suddenly he 
shouted, "Strike him! Strike him once 
more!" And immediately to his 
startled audience he related a scene 
that was occurring at Rome, the attack 
on Domitian, his struggle with his as- 
sailant, his effort to tear out his eyes, 
the rush of conspirators, and finally 
the fall of the emperor, pierced by 
seven knives. 

The story may not be true, and yet 
if it were! 



VII 

THE POISON IN THE PURPLE. 



159 



VII. 

THE POISON IN THE PURPLE. 

Rome never was healthy. The 
tramontana visited it then as now, 
fever too, and sudden death. To em- 
perors it was fatal. Since Caesar a 
malaria had battened on them all. 
Nerwx escaped, but only through 
abdication. The mantle that fell from 
Domitian's shoulders on to his was so 
dangerous in its splendor, that, fearing 
the infection, he passed it to Ulpius 
Trajanus, the lustre undimmed. 

Ulpius Trajanus, Trajan for brevity, 
a Spaniard by birth, a soldier by 
choice; one who had fought against 
Parthian and Jew, who had tramped 
through Pannonia and made it his own; 
a general whose hair had whitened on 



162 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

the field; a consul who had frightened 
nations, was afraid of the sheen of that 
purple which dazzled, corroded and 
killed. He bore it, indeed, but at 
arms-length. lie kept himself free 
from the subtlety of its poison, from 
the microbes of Rome as well. 

He was in Cologne when Domitian 
died and Nerva accepted and renounced 
the throne. It was a year before he 
ventured among the seven hills. When 
he arrived you would have said an- 
other Augustus, not the real Augustus, 
but the Augustus of legend, and the 
late Mr. Gibbon. When he girt the new 
prefect of the pretorium with the im- 
memorial sword, he addressed him in 
copy-book phrases — "If I rule wisely, 
use it for me; unwisely, against me." 

Rome listened open-mouthed. The 
change from Domitian's formula, 
"Your god and master orders it," was 
too abrupt to be immediately under- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 163 

stood. Before it was grasped Trajan 
was off again; this time to the Danube 
and beyond it, to Dacia and her fens. 

Many years later — a century or two, 
to be exact — a Persian satrap loitered 
in a forum of Rome. "It is here," he 
declared, "I am tempted to forget that 
man is mortal." 

He had passed beneath a triumphal 
arch; before him was a glittering 
square, grandiose, yet severe; a stretch 
of temples and basilicas, in which mas 
terpieces felt at home — the Forum of 
Trajan, the compliment of a nation to 
a prince. Dominating it was a col- 
umn, in whose thick spirals 3'ou read 
to-day the one reliable chronicle of the 
Dacian campaign. Was not Gautier 
well advised when he said only art 
endures ? 

There were other chronicles in 
plenty; there were the histories of 
^lius Maurus, of Marius Maximus, 



164 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

and that of Spartian, but they are lost. 
There is a page or two in the abbre- 
viation which Xiphihn made of Dion; 
AureHus Victor has a Httle to add, so 
also has Eutropus, but practically 
speaking, there is, apart from that col- 
umn, nothing save conjecture. 

Campaigns are wearisome reading, 
but not the one that is pictured there. 
You ask a curve a question, and in the 
next you find the reply. There is a 
point, however, on which it is dumb — 
the origin of the war. But if you wish 
to know the result, not the momentary 
and transient result, but the sequel 
which futurity held, look at the ruins 
at that column's base. 

The origin of the war was Domitian's 
diplomacy. The chieftain whom he 
had made king, and who had been sur- 
prised enough at receiving a diadem 
instead of the point of a sword, fancied, 
and not unreasonably, that the annuity 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 165 

which Rome paid him was to continue 
forever. But Domitian, though a god, 
was not otherwise immortal. When 
he died abruptly the annuity ceased. 
The Dacian king sent word that he was 
surprised at the delay, but he must 
have been far more so at the prompt- 
ness with which he got Trajan's re- 
ply. It was a blare of bugles, which 
he thought forever dumb; a flight of 
eagles, which he thought were winged. 
In the spirals of the column you see 
the advancing army, the retreating 
foe; then the Dacian dragon saluting 
the standards of Rome; peace de- 
clared, and an army, whose very re- 
pose is menacing, standing there to 
see that peace is kept. And was \t? 
In the ascending spiral is the new re- 
volt, the attempt to assassinate Tra- 
jan, the capture of the conspirators, 
the advance of the legions, the retreat 
of the Dacians, burning their cities as 



166 IMPERIAL PtJRPLE. 

they go, carrying their wounded and 
their women with them, and at last 
pressing about a huge cauldron that is 
filled with poison, fighting among them- 
selves for a cup of the brew, and roll- 
ing on the ground in the convulsions 
of death. Further on is the treasure 
of the king. To hide it he had turned 
a river from its source, sunk the gold 
in a vault beneath, and killed the 
workmen that had labored there. Be- 
yond is the capture of the capital, the 
suicide of the chief, a troop of soldiers 
driving captives and cattle before 
them, the death of a nation and the 
end of war. 

The subsequent triumph does not 
appear on the column. It is said that 
ten thousand beasts were slaughtered 
in the arenas, slaughtering, as they 
fell, a thousand of their slaughterers. 
But the spectacle, however fair, was 
not of a nature to detain Trajan long 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 167 

in Rome. The air there had not im- 
proved in the least, and presently he 
was off again, this time on the banks 
of the Euphrates, arguing with the 
Parthians, avoiding danger in the 
only way he knew, by facing it. 

It was then that the sheen of the 
purple glowed. If lusterless at home, 
it was royally red abroad. In a cam- 
paign that was little more than a 
triumphant promenade he doubled the 
empire. To the world of Caesar he 
added that of Alexander. Allies he 
turned into subjects, vassals into slaves. 
Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, were 
added to the realm. Trajan's foot- 
stools were diadems. He had moved 
back one frontier, he moved an- 
other. From Great Britain to the 
Indus, Rome was mistress of the earth. 
Had Trajan been younger, China, 
whose very name was unknown, would 
have yielded to him her corruption, her 



168 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

printing press, her powder and her tea. 
That he would have enjoyed these 
things is not at all conjectural. He 
was then an old man, but he was not 
a good one — at least not in the sense 
we use the term to-day. He had 
habits which are regarded now less 
as vices than perversions, but which at 
that time were taken as a matter of 
course and accepted by every one, 
even by the stoics, very calmly, with 
a grain of Attic salt at that. Men 
were regarded as virtuous when they 
were brave, when they were honest; 
the idea of using the expression in its 
later sense occurred, if at all, in jest 
merely, as a synonym for the eunuch. 
It was the matron and the vestal who 
were supposed to be virtuous, never 
the man; and that feminine virtue was 
wholly suppositious, no one who has 
sauntered through the catacombs of 
the classics preserves so much as a 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 169 

lingering doubt. The ceremonies con- 
nected with the phalhis, and those 
observed in the worship of the Bona 
Dea, were of a nature that no virtue 
could withstand. Every altar, Juvenal 
said, had its Clodius, and even in 
Clodius' absence there were always 
those breaths of Sapphic song that 
blew through Mitylene. 

It is just that absence of a quality 
which we regard as an added grace; 
one, parenthetically, which dowered 
the world with nothing less than a 
new conception of beauty that makes 
it difficult to picture Rome. Modern 
ink has acquired Nero's blush; it 
comes very readily, yet, however sen- 
sitive a writer may be, once Roman 
history is before him, he may violate 
it if he choose; he may even give it a 
child, but never can he make it immac- 
culate. He may skip, indeed, if he 
wish; and it is because he has skipped 



170 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

SO often that hats are removed when 
Augustus is mentioned. The rain of 
fire which fell on the cities that mir- 
rored their towers in the Bitter Sea, 
might just as well have fallen on him 
on Vergil, too, on Caligula, Claud 
Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Titus, Domit- 
tian, and particularly on Trajan. 

As lieutenant in the latter's trium- 
phant promenade, was a nephew, 
^lius Hadrianus, a young man for 
whom Trajan's wife is rumored to have 
had more than a platonic affection, 
and who in younger days was num- 
bered among Trajan's mignons. Dur- 
ing the progress of that promenade 
Trajan fell ill. The command of the 
troops was left to Hadrian, and Trajan 
started for Rome. On the way he 
died. In what manner is not known; 
his wife, however, was with him, and 
it was in her hand that a letter went 
to the senate statino: that Trajan had 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 171 

adopted Hadrian as his heir. Trajan 
had done nothing of the sort. The 
idea had indeed occurred to him, but 
long since it had been abandoned. 
He had even formally selected some- 
one else, but his wife was with him, 
and her lover commanded the troops. 
The lustre of the purple, always daz- 
zling, had fascinated Hadrian's eyes. 
Did he steal it? One may conjecture, 
yet never know. In any event it was 
his, and he folded it very magnifi- 
cently about him. 

Still young, a trifle over thirty, 
handsome, unusually accomplished, 
grand seigneur to his finger-tips, en- 
dowed with a manner which is 
rumored to have been one of great 
charm, possessed of the amplest appre- 
ciation of the elegancies of life, he 
had precisely the figure which purple 
adorns. But, though the lustre had 
fascinated, he too knew its spell; 



172 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

and presently he started off on a jour- 
ney about the world, which lasted 
fifteen years, and which, when ended, 
left the world the richer for his pass- 
ing, decorated with the monuments 
he had strewn. Before that journey 
began, at the earliest rumor of Tra- 
jan's death, the Euphrates and Tigris 
awoke, the cinders of Nineveh flamed. 
The rivers and land that lay between 
knew that their conqueror had gone. 
Hadrian knew it also, and knew too 
that, though he might occupy the 
warrior's throne, he never could fill 
the warrior's place. To Armenia, 
Mesopotamia, Assyria, freedom was 
restored. Dacia could have had it for 
the asking. But over Dacia the toga 
had been thrown; it was as Roman as 
Gaul. A corner of it is Roman still; 
the Roumanians are there. But 
though Dacia was quiet, in its neigh- 
borhood the restless Sarmatians 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 173 

prowled and threatened. Hadrian, 
who had already written a book on 
tactics, knew at once how to act. 
Domitian's policy was before him; he 
followed the precedent, and paid the 
Sarmatians to be still. It requires 
little acumen to see that when Rome 
permitted herself to be blackmailed 
the end was near. 

For the time being, however, there 
was peace, and in its interest Hadrian 
set out on that unequalled journey 
over a land that was his. Had fate 
relented, Trajan could have made a 
wider one still. But in Trajan was 
the soldier merely; when he journeyed 
it was with the sword. In Hadrian 
was the dilettante, the erudite too; 
he traveled not to conquer, but to 
learn, to satisfy an insatiable curiosity, 
for self-improvement, for glory too. 
Behind him was an army, not of sol- 
diers, but of masons, captained by 



174 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

architects, artists and engineers. Did 
a site please him, there was a temple 
at once, or if not that, then a bridge, 
an aqueduct, a library, a new fashion, 
sovereignty even, but everywhere the 
spectacle of an emperor in flesh and 
blood. For the first time the provin- 
ces were able to understand that a 
Csesar was not necessarily a brute, a 
phantom and a god. 

It would have been interesting to 
have made one of that court of poets 
and savants that surrounded him; to 
have dined with him in Paris, eaten 
oysters in London ; sat with him while 
he watched that wall go up before the 
Scots, and then to have passed down 
again through a world still young — a 
world beautiful, ornate, unutilitarian; 
a world to which trams, advertise- 
ments and telegraph poles had not yet 
come; a world that still had illus- 
ions, myths and mysteries; one in 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 175 

which reHgion and poetry went hand 
hand in hand — a world without news- 
papers, hypocrisy and cant. 

Hadrian, doubtless, enjoyed it. He 
was young enough to have enthusi- 
asms and to show them; he was one 
of the best read men of the day; he was 
poet, painter, sculptor, musician, eru- 
dite and emperor in one. Of course 
he enjoyed it. The world, over which 
he traveled, was his, not by virtue of 
the purple alone, but because of his 
knowledge of it. The prince is not 
necessarily cosmopolitan; the historian 
and antiquarian are. Hadrian was an 
early Quinet, an earlier Champollion; 
always the thinker, sometimes the 
cook. And to those in his suite it 
must have been a sight very unique to 
see a Caesar who had published his 
volume of erotic verse, just as you or 
I might do; who had hunted lions, not 
in the arena, but in Africa, make re- 



176 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

searches on the plain where Troy had 
been, and a supreme of sow's breast, 
peacock, pheasant, ham and boar, 
which he called Pentapharmarch, and 
which he offered as he had his Cata- 
criani — the erotic verse — as something 
original and nice. 

Insatiably inquisitive, verifying a 
history that he was preparing in the 
lands which gave that history birth, 
he passed through Egypt and Asia, 
questioning sphinxes, the cerements 
of kings, the arcana of the temples; 
deciphering the sacred books, arguing 
with magi, interrogating the stars. 
For the thinker, after the fashion of 
the hour, was astrologer too, and one 
of the few anecdotes current concern- 
ing him is in regard to a habit he had 
of drawing up on the 31st of Decem- 
ber the events of the coming year. 
After consulting the stars on that 31st 
of December which occurred in the 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 177 

twenty-second year of his reign, he 
prepared a calendar which extended 
only to the loth of July. On that day 
he died. 

The calendar does not seem to have 
been otherwise serviceable. It was in 
Bithynia he found a shepherd of such 
beauty that no one who has looked at 
his bust has looked unmoved. It is 
unearthly, a perfection of feature which 
suggests neither heaven nor hell, but 
some planet where the atmosphere dif- 
fers from ours; where it is pink, per- 
haps, or faintly ochre; where birth and 
death have forms higher than our own. 

Hadrian, captivated, led the lad in 
leash. The facts concerning that epi- 
sode have been so frequently given 
that the repetition is needless here. 
Besides, the point is elsewhere. Pres- 
ently the lad fell overboard. Hadrian 
lost a valet, Rome an emperor, and 

Olympus a god. But in attempting 
12 



178 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

to deify the lost lackey, the grief of 
Hadrian was so spontaneous, so sin- 
cere, that it is permissible to fancy 
that the lad's death was not one of 
those events which the emperor-astrol- 
oger noted beforehand on his calendar. 
The lad was decently buried, the Nile 
gave up her dead, and on the banks a 
fair city rose, one that had its temples, 
priests, altars and shrines; a city that 
worshipped a star, and called that star 
Antinous. Hadrian then could have 
congratulated himself. Even Caligula 
would have envied him. He had done 
his worst; he had deified not a lad, but 
a lust. And not for the moment alone. 
A half century later Tertullian noted 
that the worship still endured, and sub- 
sequently the Alexandrine Clement 
discovered consciences that Antinous 
had reproached. 

Antinous, deified, was presently for- 
got. A young Roman, wonderfully 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 179 

beautiful, Dion says, yet singularly 
effeminate; a youth who could barely 
carry a shield; who slept between rose- 
leaves and lilies; who was an artist 
withal; a poet who had written lines 
that Martial might have mistaken for 
his own, Cejonius Verus by name, suc- 
ceeded the Bithynian shepherd. Had- 
rian, who would have adopted Antin- 
ous, adopted Verus in his stead. But 
Hadrian was not happy in his choice. 
Verus died, and singularly enough, 
Hadrian selected as future emperor 
the one ruler against whom history has 
not a reproach, Pius Antonin. 

Meanwhile the journey continued. 
The Thousand and One Nights were re- 
alized then if ever. The beauty of the 
world was at its apogee, the glory of 
Rome as well; and through secrets and 
marvels Hadrian strolled, note-book in 
hand, his eyes unwearied, his curiosity 
unsatiated still. To pleasure him the 



180 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

intervales took on a fairer glow; cities 
decked themselves anew, the temples 
unveiled their mysteries ; and when he 
passed to the intervales liberty came; 
to the cities, sovereignty; to the tem- 
ples, shrines. The world rose to him 
as a woman greets her lover. His 
travels were not fatigues; they were 
delights, in which nations participated, 
and of which the memories endure as 
though enchanted still. 

It would have been interesting, no 
doubt, to have dined with him in 
Paris; to have quarried lions in their 
African fens; to have heard archaic 
h3'mns ripple through the rushes of 
the Nile; to have lounged in the 
Academe, to have scaled Parnassus, 
and sailed the ^gian sea ; but, a history 
and an arm-chair aiding, the traveler 
has but to close his eyes and the past 
returns. Without disturbing so much 
as a shirt-box, he may repeat that 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 181 

promenade. Triremes have foundered ; 
litters are out of date; painted ele- 
phants are no more; the sky has 
changed, climates with it; there are 
colors, as there are arts, that have 
gone from us forever; there are deso- 
late plains, where green and yellow 
was; the shriek of steam where gods 
have strayed; advertisements in sacred 
groves ; Baedekers in ruins that never 
heard an atheist's voice; solitudes 
where there were splendors; the snarl 
of jackals where once were birds and 
bees — yet, history and the arm-chair 
aiding, it all returns. Any traveler 
may follow in Hadrian's steps; he is 
stayed but once — on the threshold of 
the Temple of Eleusis. It is there 
history gropes, impotent and blind, 
and it is there the interest of that 
journey culminated. 

Beyond the episode connected with 
Antinous, Hadrian's journey was 



182 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

marked by another, one which occurred 
in Judsea. Both were infamous, no 
doubt, but, what is more to the point, 
both mark the working of the poison 
in the purple that he bore. 

Since Titus had gone, despairful 
Judaea had taken heart again. Hope 
in that land was inextinguishable. 
The walls of Jerusalem were still 
standing; in the Temple the offices 
continued. Though Rome remained, 
there was Israel too. Passing that 
way one afternoon, Hadrian mused. 
The city affected him; the site was 
superb. And as he mused it occurred 
to him that Jerusalem was less har- 
monious to the ear than Hadrianopolis ; 
that the Temple occupied a position 
on which a Capitol would look far 
better; in brief, that Jehovah might 
be advantageously replaced by Jove. 
The army of masons that were ever 
at his heels were set to work at once. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 183 

They had received similar orders and 
performed similar tasks so often 
that they could not fancy anyone 
would object. The Jews did. They 
fought as they had never fought be- 
fore; they fought for three years 
against a Nebuchadnezzar who cre- 
ated torrents of blood so abundant 
that stones were carried for miles, 
and who left corpses enough to fer- 
tilize the land for a decade. The 
survivors were sold. Those for whom 
no purchasers could be found had 
their heads amputated. Jerusalem 
was razed to the ground. The site 
of the Temple was furrowed by the 
plow, sown with salt, and in place of 
the City of David rose ^lia Capito- 
lina, a miniature Rome, whose gates, 
save on one day in the year, Jews 
were forbidden under penalty of death 
to pass, were forbidden to look at, 
and over which were images of swine, 



184 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

pigs with scornful snouts, the feet 
turned inward, the tail twisted like a 
lie. 

It was not honorable warfare, but 
it was effective; then, too, it was 
Hadrianesque, the mad insult of a 
madman to a race as mad as he. The 
purple had done its work. History 
has left the rise of this emperor con- 
jectural; his fall is written in blood. 
As he began he ended, a poet and 
a beast. 

Presently he was in Rome. It was 
not homesickness that took him there; 
he was far too cosmopolitan to suffer 
from any such malady as that. It 
was the accumulations of a fifteen-year 
excursion through the metropoli of 
art which demanded a gallery of their 
own. Another with similar tastes and 
similar power might have ordered 
everything which pleasured his eye 
to be carted to Rome, but in his qual- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 185 

ity of artifex omnipotens Hadrian 
embellished and never sacked. There 
were painters and sculptors enough 
in that army at his heels, and what- 
ever appealed to him was copied on 
the spot. So much was copied that 
a park of ten square miles was just 
large enough to form the open-air 
museum which he had designed, one 
which centuries of excavation have 
not exhausted yet. 

The museum became a mad-house. 
Hadrian was ill; tired in mind and 
body, smitten with imperalia. It was 
then the young Verus died, leaving 
for a wonder a child behind, and more 
wonderful still, Antonin was adopted. 
Through Rome, meanwhile, terror 
stalked. Hadrian, in search of a 
remedy against his increasing confus- 
ion of mind, his visible weakness of 
body, turned from physicians to ora- 
cles; from them to magic, and then to 



186 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

blood. He decimated the senate. 
Soldiers, freedmen, citizens, anybody 
and everybody were ordered off to 
death. He tried to kill himself and 
failed; he tried again, wondering, no 
doubt, why he who commanded death 
for others could not command it for 
himself. Presently he succeeded, and 
Antonin — the pious Antonin, as the 
senate called him — marshalled from 
cellars and crypts the senators and 
citizens whom Hadrian had ordered 
to be destroyed. 



VIII. 

FAUSTINE. 



187 



VIII. 

FAUSTINE. 

Anyone who has loitered a mo- 
ment among the statues in the Salle 
des Antonins at the Louvre will recall 
the bust of the Empress Faustine. It 
stands near the entrance, coercing the 
idler to remove his hat; to stop a mo- 
ment, to gaze and dream. The face 
differs from that which Mr. Swinburne 
has described. In the poise of the 
head, in the expression of the lips, 
particularly in the features which, save 
the low brow, are not of the Roman 
type, there is a commingling of just 
that loveliness and melancholy which 
must have come to Psyche when she 
lost her god. In the corners of the 
mouth, in the droop of the eyelids, 

189 



190 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

in the moulding of the chin, you may 
see that rarity — beauty and intellect in 
one — and with it the heightening 
shadow of an eternal regret. Before 
her Marcus Aurelius, her husband, 
stands, decked with the purple, with 
all the splendor of the imperator^ his 
beard in overlapping curls, his ques- 
tioning eyes dilated. Beyond is her 
daughter, Lucille, less fair than the 
mother, a healthy girl of the dairy- 
maid type. Near by is the son, Com- 
modus. Across the hall is Lucius 
Verus, the husband of Lucille; in a 
corner, Antonin, Faustine's father, and, 
more remotely, his wife. Together 
they form quite a family group, and 
to the average tourist they must seem 
a thoroughly respectable lot. Anto- 
nin certainly was respectable. He was 
the first emperor who declined to be a 
brute. Referring to his wife he said 
that he would rather be with her in a 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 191 

desert than without her in a palace; 
the speech, parenthetically, of a man 
who, though he could have cited that 
little Greek princess, Nausicaa, as a 
precedent, was too well-bred to per- 
mit so much as a fringe of his house- 
hold linen to flutter in public. Be- 
sides, at his hours, he was a poet, and 
it is said that if a poet tell a lie twice 
he will believe it. Antonin so often 
declared his wife to be a charming 
person that in the end no doubt he 
thought so. She was not charming, 
however, or if she were, her charm 
was not that of virtue. 

It was in full sight of this lady's in- 
consequences that Faustine was edu- 
cated. Wherever she looked, the 
candors of her girlhood were violated. 
The phallus then was omnipresent, 
lamblicus, not the novelist, but the phi- 
losopher, has much to say on the sub- 
ject; so has Arnobius in the Adversus 



192 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

gentes^ and Lactance in the De falsa 
religione. If Juvenal, Martial, Pe- 
tronius, are more reticent, it is because 
they were not Fathers of the Church, 
nor yet antiquarians. No one among 
us exacts a description of a spire. 
The phallus was as common to them, 
commoner even. It was on the coins, 
on the doors, in the gardens. As a 
preservative against Envy it hung from 
children's necks. On sun-dials and 
water-clocks it marked the flight of 
time. The vestals worshipped it. At 
weddings it was used in a manner 
which need not be described. 

It was from such surroundings that 
Faustine stepped into the arms of the 
severe and stately prince whom her 
father had chosen. That Marcus 
Aurelius adored her is certain. His 
note-book shows it. A. more tender- 
hearted and perfect lover romance may 
show, but history cannot. He must 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 193 

have been the quintessence of refine- 
ment, a thoroughbred to his finger- 
tips ; one for whom that purple mantle 
was too gaudy, and yet who bore it, 
as he bore everything else, in that 
self-abnegatory spirit which the 
higher reaches of philosophy bring. 
He was of that rare type that never 
complains and always consoles. 

After Antonin's death, his hours 
ceased to be his own. On the 
Euphrates there was the wildest dis- 
order. To the north new races were 
pushing nations over the Danube and 
the Rhine. From the catacombs Christ 
was emerging; from the Nile, Serapis. 
The empire was in disarray. Antonin 
had provided his son-in-law with a 
coadjutor, Lucius Verus, the son of 
Hadrian's mignon, a magnificent scoun- 
drel; a tall, broad-shouldered athlete, 
with a skin as fresh as a girl's and 

thick curly hair, which he covered 
13 



194 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

with a powder of gold; a viveur., 
whose suppers are famous still; whose 
guests were given the slaves that 
served them, the plate off which they 
had eaten, the cups from which they 
had drunk — cups of gold, cups of sil- 
ver, jeweled cups, cups from Alexan- 
dria, murrhine vases filled with nard — 
cars and litters to go home with, 
mules with silver trappings and negro 
muleteers. Capitolinus says that, 
while the guests feasted, sometimes 
the magnificent Verus got drunk, and 
was carried to bed in a coverlid, or 
else, the red feather aiding, turned 
out and fought the watch. 

It was this splendid individual to 
whom Marcus Aurelius intrusted the 
Euphrates. The}^ had been brought 
up together, sharing each others 
tutors, writing themes for the same in- 
structor, both meanwhile adolescently 
enamored of the fair Faustine. It was 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 195 

to Marcus she was given, the empire 
as a dower; and when that dower 
passed into his hands, he could think 
of nothing more equitable than to ask 
Verus to share it with him. Verus 
was not stupid enough to refuse, and 
at the hour when the Parthians turned 
ugly, he needed little urging to set out 
for the East, dreaming, as he did so, 
of creating there an empire that should 
be wholly his. 

At that time Faustine must have 
been at least twenty-eight, possibly 
thirty. There were matrons who had 
not seen their fifteenth year, and 
Faustine had been married young. 
Her daughter, Lucille, was nubile. 
Presently Verus, or rather his lieu- 
tenants, succeeded, and the girl 
was betrothed to him. There was a 
festival, of course, games in abun- 
dance, and plenty of blood. 

It would have been interestingf to 



196 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

have seen her that day, the iron ring 
of betrothal on her finger, her brother, 
Commodus, staring at the arrange- 
ment of her hair, her mother prettily 
perplexed, her father signing orders 
which messengers brought and dis- 
patched, while the sand took on a 
deeper red, and Rome shrieked its 
delight. Yes, it would have been 
interesting and typical of the hour. 
Her hair in the ten tresses which 
were symbolic of 2i fiancee^ s innocence, 
must have amused that brute of a 
brother of hers, and the iron ring on 
the fourth finger of her left hand 
must have given Faustine food for 
thought; the vestals, in their immac- 
ulate robes, must have gazed at her 
in curious, sisterly ways, and because 
of her fresh beauty surely there 
were undertones of applause. Should 
her father disappear she would 
make a gracious imperatrix indeed. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 197 

But, meanwhile, there was Faus- 
tine, and at sight of her legends of 
old imperial days returned. She was 
not Messalina 3xt, but in the stables 
there were jockeys whose sudden 
wealth surprised no one; in the arenas 
there were gladiators that fought, not 
for liberty, nor for death, but for the 
caresses of her eyes ; in the side-scenes 
there were mimes who spoke of her; 
there were senators who boasted in 
their cups, and in the theatre Rome 
laughed colossally at the catchword 
of her amours. 

Marcus Aurelius then was occu 
pied with affairs of state. In simi- 
lar circumstances so was Claud — 
Messalina's husband — so, too, was An- 
tonin. But Claud was an imbecile, 
Antonin a man of the world, while 
Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher. 
When fate links a woman to any one 
of these varieties of the husband, she 



198 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

is blessed indeed. Faustine was par- 
ticularly favored. 

The stately prince was not alone a 
philosopher — a calling, by the way, 
which was common enough then, and 
has become commoner since — he was 
a philosopher who believed in philos- 
ophy, a rarity then as now. The ex- 
act trend of his thought is difficult to 
define. His note-book is filled with 
hesitations; materialism had its allure- 
ments, so also had pantheism; the ad- 
vantages of the Pyrrhonic suspension 
of judgment were clear to him too ; ac- 
cording to the frame of mind in which 
he wrote, you might fancy him an ag- 
nostic, again an akosmist, sometimes 
both, but always the ethical result is 
the same. 

"Revenge yourself on your enemy 
in not resembling him. Forgive; for- 
give always; die forgiving. Be in- 
dulgent to the wrong-doer; be com- 



I 31 PE RIAL PURPLE. 199 

passionate to him; tell him how he 
should act ; speak to him without anger, 
without sarcasm; speak to him affec- 
tionately. Besides, what do you know 
of his wrong -doing? Are all his 
thoughts familiar to you? May there 
not be something that justifies him? 
And you, are you entirely free from 
reproach? Have you never done 
wrong? And if not, was it fear that 
restrained you? Was it pride, or 
what?" 

In the synoptic gospels similar 
recommendations appear. But where 
are the Christians that observe them? 
There may be much joy in heaven 
over the sinner that repents ; in Christ- 
endom the joy is at his downfall. We 
adore the Master. His precepts are 
grateful to us. But does it not seem 
that we find the adoration sufficient? 
Charity is the New Testament told in 
a word. There is not a Christian com- 



200 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

munity that does not acknowledge its 
beauty, and there is not one that prac- 
tices it. But Christians are not phi- 
losophers. The latter do what good 
they may without hope of reward, be- 
cause they regard evil as a part of the 
universal order of things, one which 
we have neither the right nor the abil- 
ity to condemn; because vice is an 
error of the understanding, one which it 
is idle to blame, yet righteous to rectify. 
From whatever source such a tenet 
springs, whether from materialism, 
stoicism, pyrrhonism, epicureanism, 
atheism even, is of small matter; it is 
a tenet which is honorable to the holder 
and gracious too. This sceptered 
misanthrope possessed it, and it was 
in that his wife was blessed. Years 
later he died, forgiving her in silence, 
praising her aloud. ' Claud, referring 
to Messalina, shouted through the 
Forum that the fate which destined him 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 201 

to marry impure women destined him 
to punish them. Marcus AureHus said 
nothing. He did not know what fate 
destined him to do, but he did know 
that philosophy taught him to forgive. 
The abiHty to forgive, however, is one 
which is an attribute only of the great. 
Small minds hate on. 

It was this greatness that first per- 
plexed Faustine. She was restless, 
frivolous, perhaps also a trifle de- 
praved. Frivolous because all 
women were, depraved because her 
mother was, and restless because of 
the curiosity that inflammable imagi- 
nations share — in brief, a Roman 
princess. Her husband differed from 
the Roman prince. His youth had 
not been entirely circumspect ; he, too, 
had his curiosities, but they were 
satisfied, he had found that they 
stained. When he married he was 
already the thinker; doubtless, he was 



202 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

tiresome; he could have had Httle 
small-talk, and his hours of love-mak- 
ing must have been rare. Presently 
the affairs of state engrossed him. 
Faustine was left to herself; save a 
friend of her own sex, a woman can 
have no worse companion. She, too, 
discovered she had curiosities. A 
gladiator passed that way — then 
Rome ; then Lesbos ; then the Lampsa- 
cene. "You are my husband's mis- 
tress," her daughter cried to her one 
day. "And you," the mother an- 
swered, "are your brother's." Even 
in the aridity of a chronicle the 
accusation and rejoinder are re- 
volting. Fancy what they must 
have been when mother and daughter 
hissed them in each others teeth. 
Whether the argument continued is 
immaterial. Both could have claimed 
the sanction of religion. In those 
days a sin was a prayer. Religion 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 203 

was then, as it always had been, 
purely political. With the individ- 
ual, with his happiness or aspirations, it 
concerned itself not at all. It was the 
prosperity of the empire, its peace and 
immortality, for which sacrifices were 
made, and libations offered. The god 
of Rome was Rome, and religion was 
patriotism. The antique virtues, 
courage in war, moderation in peace, 
and honor at all times, were civic, not 
personal. It was the state that had a 
soul, not the individual. Man was 
ephem.eral; it was the nation that en- 
dured. It was the permanence of its 
grandeur that was important, nothing 
else. 

To insure that permanence each 
citizen labored. As for the citizen, 
death was near, and he hastened to 
live; before the roses could fade he 
wreathed himself with them. Immor- 
tality to him was in his descendants, 



204 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

the continuation of his name, respect 
to his ashes. Any other form of future 
hfe was a speculation, infrequent at 
that. In anterior epochs Fright had 
peopled Tartarus, but Fright had 
gone. The Elysian Fields were 
vague, wearisome to contemplate; 
even metempsychosis had no adher- 
ents. "After death," said Caesar, 
"there is nothing," and all the world 
agreed with him. The hour, too, in 
which three thousand gods had not a 
single atheist, had gone, never to re- 
turn. Old faiths had crumbled. 
None the less was Rome the abridge- 
ment of every superstition. The gods 
of the conquered had always been 
part of her spoils. The Pantheon had 
become a lupanar of divinities that 
presided over birth, and whose rites 
were obscene; an abattoir of gods 
that presided over death, and whose 
worship was gore. To please them 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 205 

was easy. Blood and debauchery 
was all that was required. That 
the upper classes had no faith in 
them at all goes without the need 
of telling; the atmosphere of their 
atriums dripped with metaphysics. 
But in the Forum, in the circus, amphi- 
theatres; in the temples, porticoes and 
thick, wide streets — in short, wher- 
ever the masses congregated — the 
gods were not only officially revered, 
they were believed in, and so thor- 
oughly that, had a sceptic attempted 
to air his scepticism in public, with 
that sceptic it would not have fared 
well. Of the atheism of the upper 
classes the people knew nothing; they 
clung piously to a faith which held a 
theological justification of every sin, 
and in the temples fervent prayers 
were murmured, not for future happi- 
ness, for that was unobtainable, nor 
yet for wisdom or virtue, for those 



206 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

things the gods neither granted nor 
possessed; the prayers were that the 
gods would favor the suppHant in his 
hatreds and in his lusts. 

Such was Rome when Verus re- 
turned to wed Lucille. Before his 
car the phallus swung; behind it was 
the pest. A little before, the Tiber 
overflowed. Presently, in addition to 
the pest, famine came. It was patent 
to everyone that the gods were vexed. 
There was blasphem.y somewhere, 
and the Christians were tossed to the 
beasts. Faustine watched them die. 
At first they were to her as other 
criminals, but immediately a differ- 
ence was discerned. They met death, 
not with grace, perhaps, but with ex- 
altation. They entered the arena as 
though it were an enchanted garden^ 
the color of emerald, where dreams 
came true. Faustine questioned. 
They were enemies of state, she was 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 207 

told. The reply left her perplexed, 
and she questioned again. It was 
then her eyes became inhabited 
by regret. The past was hideous; 
she tried to put it from her, but re- 
morse is physical; it declines to be 
dismissed. She would have killed 
herself, but she no longer dared. The 
past was hideous, but in the future 
there was light. In some ray of it 
she must have walked, for when at the 
foot of Mt. Taurus, in a little Cappa- 
docian village, years later, she died, 
her lips were glued to the cross. 



IX. 

THE AGONY. 



209 
14 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 211 



IX. 
THE AGONY. 

The high virtues are not complais- 
ant, it is the cad the canaille adore. 
In spite of everything, Nero had been 
beloved by the masses. For years 
there were roses on his tomb. Under 
Vespasian there was an impostor whom 
Greece and Asia ^^cclaimed in his 
name. The memory of his festivals 
was unf orgetable ; regret for him re- 
fused to be stilled. He was more 
than a god; he was a tradition. His 
second advent was confidently ex- 
pected; the Jews believed in his resur- 
rection; to the Christian he had never 
died, and suddenly he reappeared. 

Rome had declined to accept the old 
world tenet that the soul has its avat- 



212 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

ars, yet, when Commodus sauntered 
from that distant sepulchre, into 
which, poison aiding, he had placed 
his putative father, Rome felt that 
the Egyptians were wiser than they 
looked; that the soul did migrate, and 
that in the blue eyes of the young 
emperor Nero's spirit shone. 

Herodian, who has written very 
agreeably on the subject, describes 
him as another Prince Charming, 
His hair, which was very fair, glis- 
tened like gold in the sun; he was 
slender, not at all effeminate, exceed- 
ingly graceful, exceedingly gracious; 
endowed with the promptest blush, 
with the best intentions; studious of 
the interests of his people; glad of 
advice, seeking it even; courteous and 
deferential to the senate and his 
father's friends — in short, an adoles- 
cent Nero — a trifle more guileful, 
however; already a parricide, a comed- 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 213 

ian as well; one who in a moment 
would toss the mask aside and disclose 
the mongrel; the offspring, not of an 
empress and an emperor, but the tiger- 
cub that Faustine had got by a 
gladiator. 

The tender-hearted philosopher, who 
in a campaign against some fretful 
Teutons, had taken Commodus with 
him, knew that he was not his son; 
knew, too, when the agon}^ seized him, 
from whose hand the agony came; but 
in earlier life he had jotted in his note- 
book, "Forgive, forgive always; die 
forgiving;" and, as he forgave the 
mother, so he forgave the child, rec- 
ommending him with his last breath 
to the army and to Rome. 

As the people had loved Nero, so 
did the aristocracy love Marcus Aure- 
lius; his foster-father Antonin ex- 
cepted, he was the only gentleman 
that had sat on the throne. No wonder 



214 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

they loved him ; and seeing this early 
edition of the prince in the fairy tale 
emerge from the bogs of Germany, 
his fair face haloed by the glisten and 
gold of his hair, hearts went out to 
him; the wish of his putative father 
was ratified, and the son of a gladia- 
tor was emperor of Rome. 

Lampridus — or Spartian was it? 
The title-page bears Lampridus' 
name, but there is some doubt as to 
the authorship. However; whoever 
made the abridgement of the life of 
Commodus which appears among the 
chronicles of the Scriptores Historice 
Aug'ustcs^ says that before his birth 
Faustine dreamed she had engendered 
a serpent. It is not impossible that 
^ Faustine had been reading Ctzias, 
and had stumbled over his account of 
the Martichoras, a serpent with a 
woman's face and the talons of a bird 
of prey. For it was that she conceived. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 215 

It would have been interesting to 
have seen that 3'oung man, the mask 
removed, frightening the senate into 
calHng Rome Commodia, and then 
in a Hnen robe promenading in the at- 
tributes of a priest of Anubis through 
a seragHo of six hundred girls and 
mignons who prostituted themselves 
as he passed. There was a spectacle, 
which in its monstrosity Nero had 
not surpassed. But Nero was vieux 
jeu. Commodus outdid him, first in 
debauchery, then in the arena. Nero 
had died while in training to kill a 
lion; Commodus did not take the 
trouble to train. It was the lions that 
were trained, not he. A skin on his 
shoulders, a club in his hand, he de- 
scended naked into the ring, and there 
felled beasts and men. Then, ac- 
claimed as Hercules, he returned to 
the pulvinar, and a mignon on one 
side, a mistress on the other, ordered 



216 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

the guard to massacre the spectators 
and set fire to Rome. After enter- 
ing the arena six or seven hundred 
times, and there vanquishing men 
whose eyes had been put out and 
whose legs were tied, the colossal 
statue which Nero had made after his 
own image was altered; to the top 
came the bust of Commodus, to the 
base this legend: T/ie victor of ten 
thousand gladiators^ Commodus-Her- 
cules^ Imperator. 

Meanwhile conspirators were at 
work. Like Nero, Commodus could 
have sought in vain for a friend. His 
life was attempted again and again; 
he escaped, but never the plotters; 
only when they had gone there were 
more. He knew he was doomed. 
There was the usual comet; the statue 
of Hercules had perspired visibly; an 
owl had been caught above his bed- 
room, and once he had wiped in his 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 217 

hair the hand which he had plunged 
in the warm wound of a gladiator, 
dead at his feet. These omens could 
mean but one thing. None the less, if 
he were doomed, so were others. 
One day one of those miserable chil- 
dren that the emperors kept about 
them found a tablet. It was as good as 
anything else to play with; and, as 
the child tossed it through the hall, 
the one woman that had loved Com- 
modus caue^ht it and read on it that 
she and all the household were to die. 
Within an hour Commodus was killed. 
There is a page in Lampridus, 
which he quotes as coming from the 
lost chronicles of Marius Maximus, 
and which contains the joy of the 
senate at the news. It is too long for 
transcription, but as a bit of realism 
it is unique. There is a shiver in 
every line. You hear the voices of 
hundreds, drunk with fury, frenzied 



218 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

with delight ; the fierce welcome that 
greeted Pertinax — a slave's grandson, 
who was emperor for a minute — the 
joy of hate assuaged. 

The delight of the senate was not 
shared by the pretorians. Pertinax 
was promptly massacred; the throne 
was put up at auction ; there were two 
or three emperors at once, and pres- 
ently the purple was seized by Septi- 
mus Severus, a rigid, white-haired 
disciplinarian, who in his admiration 
for Marcus Aurelius, founded that 
second dynasty of the Antonins with 
which antiquity may be said to end. 

When he had gone, his elder son, 
Bastian, renamed Aurelius Antonin, 
and because of a cloak he had in- 
vented nicknamed Caracalla, bounded 
like a panther on the throne. In 
a moment he was gnawing at his 
brother's throat, and immediately 
there occurred a massacre such as 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 219 

Rome had never seen. Xiphilin says 
the nights were not long enough to 
kill ail of the condemned. Twenty 
thousand people were slaughtered in 
twenty hours. The streets were 
emptied, the theatres closed. 

The blood that ran then must have 
been in rillets too thin to slake Cara- 
calla's thirst, for simultaneously al- 
most, he was in Gaul, in Dacia — 
wherever there was prey. African by 
his father, Syrian on his mother's 
side, Caracalla was not a panther 
merely; he was a herd of them. He 
had the cruelty, the treachery and 
guile of a wilderness of tiger-cats. 
No man, said a thinker, is wholly 
base. Caracalla was. He had not a 
taste; not a vice, even, which was not 
washed and rewashed in blood. In a 
moment of excitement Commodus set 
his guards on the spectators in the 
amphitheatre ; the damage was slight, 



220 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

for the Colosseum was so constructed 
that in two minutes the eighty or ninety 
thousand people which it held could 
escape. Caracalla had the exits closed. 
Those who escaped were naked; to 
bribe the guards they were forced to 
strip themselves to the skin. In the cir- 
cus a vestal caught his eye. He tried 
to violate her, and failing impotently, 
had her buried alive. "Caracalla 
knows that I am a virgin, and knows 
why," the girl cried as the earth 
swallowed her, but there was no one 
there to aid. 

Such things show the trend of a 
temperament, though not, perhaps, its 
force. Presently the latter was dis- 
played. For years those arch-enemies 
of Rome, the unconquerable Parthians, 
had been quiet; bound, too, by treaties 
which held Rome's honor. Not Cara- 
calla's, however; he had none. An 
embassy went out to Artobane, the 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 221 

king. Caracalla wished a bride, and 
what fairer one could he have than the 
child of the Parthian monarch? Then, 
too, the embassy was charged to ex- 
plain, the marriage of Rome and Par- 
thia would be the union of the Orient 
and the Occident, peace by land and 
sea. Artobane hesitated, and with 
cause; but Caracalla wooed so ardently 
that finally the king said yes. 

The news went abroad. The Par- 
thians, delighted, prepared to receive 
the emperor. When Caracalla crossed 
the Tigris, the highroad that led to the 
capital was strewn with sacrifices, 
with altars covered with flowers, with 
welcomings of every kind. Caracalla 
was visibly pleased. Beyond the gates 
of the capital, there was the king; he 
had advanced to greet his son-m-law, 
and that the greeting might be effec- 
tive, he had assembled his nobles and 
his troops. The latter were armed 



222 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

with cymbals, with hautbois, and with 
flutes; and as Caracalla and his army 
approached, there was music, dancing 
and song; there were hbations too, and 
as the day was practically the wedding 
of East and West, there was not a 
weapon to be seen — gala robes merely, 
brilliant and long. Caracalla saluted 
the king, gave an order to an adjutant, 
and on the smiling defenceless Par- 
thians the Roman eagles pounced. 
Those who were not killed were made 
prisoners of war. The next day Cara- 
calla withdrew, charged with booty, 
firing cities as he went. 

A little before, rumor reached him 
Ihat a group of the citizens of Alex- 
andria had referred to him as a fratri- 
cide. After the adventure in Parthia 
he bethought him of the city which 
Alexander had founded, and of the 
temple of Serapis that was there. He 
wished to honor both, he declared. 



IMPERIAL PURPLE, 223 

and presently he was at the gates. 
The people were enchanted; the ave- 
nues were strewn with flowers, lined 
with musicians. There were illumina- 
tions, festivals, sacrifices, torrents of 
perfumes, and through it all Caracalla 
passed, a legion at his heels. To see 
him, to participate in the succession of 
prodigalities, the surrounding country 
flocked there too. In recognition of 
the courtesy with which he was re- 
ceived, Caracalla gave a banquet to 
the. magnates and the clergy. Before 
his guests could leave him they were 
killed. Through the streets the legion 
was at work. Alexandria was turned 
into a cemetery. Herodian states that 
the carnage was so great that the Nile 
was red to its mouth. 

In Rome at that time was a pre- 
fect, Macrin by name, who had 
dreamed the purple would be his. He 
was a swarthy liar, and his promises 



224 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

were such that the pretorians were 
wiUing that the dream should come 
true. Emissaries were dispatched, and 
Caracalla was stabbed. In his lug- 
gage poison was found to the value-of 
five million five hundred thousand 
drachmae. What fresh turpitude he 
was devising no one knew, and the 
discovery might serve as an epitaph, 
were it not that by his legions he was 
adored. No one had abandoned to 
the army such booty as he. 

Meanwhile, in a chapel at Emissa, a 
boy was dancing indolently to the kiss 
of flutes. A handful of Caracalla's 
soldiers passed that way, and thought 
him Bacchus. In his face was the en- 
igmatic beauty of gods and girls — the 
charm of the dissolute and the way- 
ward heightened by the divine. On 
his head was a diadem; his frail tunic 
was of purple and gold, but the 
sleeves, after the Phoenician fashion, 



/ MP E RIAL P URPLE. 225 

were wide, and he was shod with a 
thin white leather that reached to the 
thighs. He was fourteen, and priest 
of the Sun. The chapel was roomy 
and rich. There was no statue — a 
black phallus merely, which had fallen 
from above, and on which, if you 
looked closely, you could see the image 
of Elagabal, the Sun. 

The rumor of his beauty brought 
other soldiers that way, and the lad, 
feeling that Rome was there, ceased 
to dance, strolling through pauses of 
the worship, a troop of galli at his 
heels, surveying the intruders with 
querulous, feminine eyes. 

Presently a whisper filtered that the 

lad was Caracalla's son. There were 

centurions there that remembered 

Semiamire, the lad's mother, very 

well; they had often seen her, a superb 

creature with scorching eyes, before 

whom fire had been carried as though 
15 



226 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

she were empress. It was she who 
had put it beyond Caracalla's power to 
violate that vestal when he tried. She 
was his cousin; her life had been 
passed at court; it was Macrin who 
had exiled her. And with the whis- 
per filtered another — that she was 
rich; that she had lumps of gold, 
which she would give gladly to 
whomso aided in placing her Antonin 
on the throne. There were gossips 
who said ill-natured things of this 
lady; who insinuated that she had had 
so many lovers that she herself could 
not tell who was the father of her 
child; but the lumps of gold had a 
language of their own. The disbanded 
army espoused the young priest's 
cause; there was a skirmish, Macrin 
was killed, and Heliogabalus was em- 
peror of Rome. 

'' I would never have written the 
life of this Antonin Impurissimus," 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 227 

said Lampriclus, ^' were it not that he 
had predecessors." Even in Latin the 
task was difficult. In EngHsh it is im- 
possible. There are subjects that per- 
mit of a hint, particularly if it be 
masked to the teeth, but there are 
others that no art can drape. "The 
inexpressible does not exist,'' Gautier 
remarked, when he finished a notori- 
ous romance, nor does it; but even 
his pen would have balked had he 
tried it on Helios^abalus. There is 
another difficulty. The historian 
should possess an unprejudiced indif- 
ference; unless he happens to address 
a particular school, any comment is 
an impertinence. It is not for the 
undertaker to judge the corpse; he 
may bury it, or enbalm it, if by chance 
he know how, but who has ever cared 
to learn his opinion on the merits and 
demerits of the defunct? It is for 
this reason, no doubt, that volumes 



228 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

which treat of the past are handsomely 
bound and never read. The com- 
mentator is not only impertinent, he 
is a bore. 

In his work on the Csesars, Sueto- 
nius drew breath but once — he called 
Nero a monster. Subsequently he 
must have regretted having done so 
not because Nero was not a monster 
but because it was sufficient to dis 
play the beast without adding a de 
scriptive placard. In that was Sueto 
nius' advantage; he could describe. 
In the present era a writer may not. 
There are details, however historical, 
into which he must decline to enter. 
Even to blase initiates of old world 
libraries he may not suggest. Helio- 
gabalus presents that difficulty. It 
is not merely that he was depraved, 
for all of that lot were; it was that he 
made depravity a pursuit; and, the 
purple favoring, carried it not only 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 229 

beyond the limits of the imaginable, 
but beyond the Umits of the real. At 
the feet of that painted boy, Elephantis 
and Parrhasius could have sat and 
learned a lesson. Apart from that 
phase of his sovereignty, he was a 
little Sardanapalus, an Asiatic mig- 
non, who found himself great. 

It would have been curious to have 

seen him in that wonderful palace, 

clothed like a Persian queen, insisting 

that he should be addressed as Impera- 

trix, and quite living up to the title. 

It would not only be interesting, it 

would give one an insight into just 

how much the Romans could stand. 

It would have been curious, also, to 

have assisted at that superb and poetic 

ceremonial, in which, having got 

Tanit from Carthage as consort for 

Elagabal, he presided, girt with the 

pomp of church and state, over the 

nuptials of the Sun and Moon. 



230 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

He had read Suetonius, and not an 
eccentricity of the Caesars escaped 
him. He would not hunt flies by the 
hour, as Domitian had done, for that 
would be mere imitation; but he could 
collect cobwebs, and he did, by the 
ton. Caligula and Vitellius had been 
famous as hosts, but the feasts that 
Heliogabalus gave outranked them 
for sheer splendor. From panels in 
the ceiling such masses of flowers fell 
that guests were smothered before 
they could escape. Those that sur- 
vived had set before them glass game 
and sweets of crystal. The menu was 
embroidered on the table cloth — not 
the mere list of dishes, but pictures 
drawn with the needle of the dishes 
themselves. And presently, after the 
little jest in glass had been enjoyed, 
you were served with camel's heels; 
combs torn froin living cocks; plat- 
ters of nightingale tongues; ostrich 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 231 

brains, prepared with that garum 
sauce which the Sybarites invented, 
and of which the secret is lost; there- 
with were peas and grains of gold; 
beans and amber; quail, peppered with 
pearl dust; lentils and rubies; spiders 
in jelly; lion's dung, served in pastry. 
The o-uests that wine overcame were 
carried to bed-rooms. When they 
awoke, there staring at them were 
tigers and leopards — tame, of course; 
but some of the guests were stupid 
enough not to know it, and died of 

fright. 

All this was of a nature to amuse a 
lad who had made the phallus the 
chief object of worship; who had 
banished Jupiter, dismissed Isis; who, 
over paths that were strewn with 
lilies, had himself, in the attributes of 
Bacchus, drawn by tigers; by lions as 
Mother of the Gods; again, by naked 
women, as Heliogabalus on his way 



232 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 

to wed a vestal, and procure for the 
empire a child that should be wholly 
divine. 

It amused Rome, too, and his pro- 
digalities in the circus were such 
that Lampridus admits that the peo- 
ple were glad he was emperor. 
Neither Caligula nor Nero had 
been as lavish, and neither Caligula 
nor Nero as cruel. The atrocities he 
committed, if less vast than those of 
Caracalla's, were more acute. Domit- 
ian even was surpassed in the tortures 
invented by a boy, so dainty that he 
never used the same garments, the 
same shoes, the same jewels, the same 
woman twice. 

In spite of this, or perhaps pre- 
cisely on that account, the usual con- 
pirators were at work, and one day 
this little painted girl, who had pre- 
pared several devices for a unique 
and splendid suicide, was taken 



IMPERIAL PURPLE. 233 

unawares and tossed in the latrinae. 

In him the glow of the purple reaehed 
its apogee. Rome had been watching 
a crescendo that had mounted with the 
years. Its culmination was in that 
hermaphrodite. But the tension had 
been too great — something snapped; 
there was nothing left — a procession 
of colorless bandits merely, Thracians, 
Gauls, Pannonians, Dalmatians, Goths, 
women even, with Attila for a climax 
and the refurbishing of the world. 

Rome was still mistress, but she was 
growing very old. She had conquered 
step by step. When one nation had 
fallen, she garotted another. To van- 
quish her, the earth had to produce 
not only new races, but new creeds. 
The parturitions, as we know, were 
successful. Already the blue, victo- 
rious eyes of Vandal and of Goth were 
peering down at Rome; already they 
had whispered together, and over the 



234 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 

hydromel had drunk to her fall. The 
earth's new children fell upon her, not 
one by one, but all at once, and pres- 
ently the colossus tottered, startling 
the universe with the uproar of her 
agony; calling to gods that had va- 
cated the skies; calling to Jupiter; call- 
ing to Isis; calling in vain. Where 
the thunderbolt had gleamed, a cruci- 
fix stood. On the shoulders of a pre- 
late was the purple that had dazzled 

the world. 
Asnelles, August; Paris, October, 1891. 



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